Here's some fodder for discussion at the next Passover seder. Moses might have gotten some serious help from the wind when he parted the Red Sea as chronicled in the Old Testament.

According to a new computer-modeling study, wind patterns at a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean Sea are such that they could have pushed the waters back and created a temporary land crossing.

The researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder made their discovery as part of a larger study of wind's impact on water depths and reported their findings in a recent issue of the online peer-review journal PLoS One. They used archaeological records, satellite measurements, and current maps to reconstruct the likely locations and depths of Nile delta waterways, which have shifted considerably since Moses' time more than 3,000 years ago.