Somosomo, Fiji

From Geohashing
Revision as of 20:39, 7 March 2012 by imported>ReletBot (Bot: Automated text replacement (-irc.peeron.com +carabiner.peeron.com))
Pacific Ocean -15,-179 -15,-178
Lambasa Somosomo -16,-178
-17,179 -17,-179 -17,-178

Today's location: not yet announced

This graticule is located at -16,-179. Today's location

Somosomo is the largest urban area on the island of Taveuni, the third largest island of Fiji. The island is one of the few places where the 180th meridian crosses land, just to the west of Somosomo itself.

Because of the 30W Time Zone Rule, neighbouring graticules' geohashes are NOT mirrored around the 180th meridian, unlike at the prime meridian, as the different 30W rules are used on each side of the line. However, this does not prevent neighbouring hashpoints being arbitrarily close. The chance of a hashpoint falling on Taveuni in the Somosomo graticule is about 2%, and in the next graticule to the west about 1.5%. Because of the 30W rule these probabilities are independent, so in theory every ten years or so the island will have the distinction of two land hashpoints on the same day.

For retrohashes, the position is different, as before 24 May 2008 the 180th meridian did mirror neighbouring hashpoints. A near-miss example was on 12 May 2008, as shown in these maps: