Stokes drift

Ok kiddo, so imagine you're at the beach and you see waves coming towards you. As the waves reach the shore, you might notice that the water doesn't just move straight towards land - it also kind of moves to the side as well. This is called the "Stokes Drift."

Now, the Stokes Drift is a little bit tricky to explain, but let's try. So, when waves move towards the shore, the surface of the ocean moves up and down. We call this "wave motion." The thing is, this wave motion also creates tiny little circular currents underneath the surface of the water. These currents don't move the water towards the shore - they just kind of swirl around in circles.

So, imagine that you're a little piece of water in one of these circular currents. You're just hanging out, swirling around, when all of a sudden a wave comes crashing in from above. As the wave moves through the water, it pushes and pulls on you, causing you to move a little bit to the side in the direction the wave is moving. This is the "Stokes Drift"!

So, basically, the Stokes Drift is the sideways movement of water that happens when waves come crashing into the shore. It's caused by tiny little circular currents underneath the surface of the ocean that get pushed around by the wave motion.

Does that make sense, little one?