La Palma is rumbling - What are the implications of a 40 foot Tsunami along the east coast?

[tehpope]

I had a dream that people would drift off topic on kiwifarms.

 

[Certified_Autist]

Something about this volcano doesn't feel right. I like watching these things, they are interesting, but the ones in Iceland, Hawaii, Japan, etc felt different. Maybe it's the lack of news coverage or the "Nothing to see here" attitude of the media and "experts" that's making me suspicious.

Exactly. The media loves to make even minor events look as dramatic as possible to draw views so they can make money. This tends to be true regardless of the specific political bias of each company. So you'd think that the real possibility of a mega tsunami wiping out the East coast is something that they would at least glance at.

Checking my news feed, the current top stories are

* the usual ree-ing about people that don't want the covid vaccine
* the police looking for the boyfriend of a random nobody girl that went missing
* Some negative opinion piece about Trump
* Some positive opinion piece about Biden
* Journalist still melting down over Jan 6
* Story about "anti-masker" Florida GOP politician who got covid
* something about Canadian government elections
* Another article shilling vax booster shots
* Something about a hurricane in Texas
* etc etc etc you get the point

Most of the stuff I listed was inane crap that didn't serve a real purpose besides trying to get views and/or rile people up. So given that they really like to get views and rile people up, why are they keeping their mouths shut over this potential disaster?

I agree with you, something's not right.

 

[PotatoSalad4711]

Who cares if this is a nothingburger. Mother Nature is a cruel mistress, but she manages to be beautiful at the same time.

 

[AssignedEva]

I heard about the risk of a megatsunami from La Palma about a decade ago so I had in my head it was seemingly possible. The handling of covid (and my experience of talking about it back in Jan 2020 and being dismissed as a kook) is also on my mind. I also know that there was a volcano that had a bunch of strombolian eruptions a few years ago that caused a tsunami anyway.

But the volcano has started erupting and seismologists are saying that there's not going to be a megatsunami, and the megatsunami was a fringe theory brought up by one research team - Ward and Day (2001). I'm going to put my chips on black and say that there's not going to be a tsunami - or if there is, it'll be a small one that will mostly damage coastal cities in the Canaries (with minimal loss of life because people can just run up to the cliffs and mountains) and West Africa.

 

[Prosopagnosia]

More than 5.000 residents evacuated from their homes. (Source)
At least 100 houses affected.

This video shows how a house is slowly engulfed by lava:

 

[Corpun]

i'd assume the delmarva pennesula which is barely populated would take the brunt of any tsunami, dc and baltimore would be relatively safe, the flooding no worse than any hurricane, its new england that would be fucked. NYC and jersey too.

A lot of Delmarva is very flat, little above sea level with a lot of marshlands. Same goes for Southern Jersey. It's also an area with pisspoor hurricane evacuation routes.

 

[FatalTater]

So many comments in the youtube chats are like... these people really think the Americas are going to be wiped out the minute lava touches seawater.
I just can't.

 

[Sneed's Feed And Seed]

This video shows how a house is slowly engulfed by lava:
View attachment 2553376

See, this is when you just get out and let Pele have the house. If the lava is literally on your doorstep, it's not going to magically turn your home into a cave entrance.

 

[T0oCoolFool]

More than 5.000 residents evacuated from their homes. (Source)
At least 100 houses affected.

This video shows how a house is slowly engulfed by lava:
View attachment 2553376

Why are they still in the house anyway? Trying to salvage belongings? You couldn't pay me to go there.

 

[Billy Beer]

Why are they still in the house anyway? Trying to salvage belongings? You couldn't pay me to go there.

You wouldn't have to put the heating on.

 

[Getting tard comed]

Why did people think a 40ft tsunami would travel 3-5k miles and not be dissipated along the way again?

 

[Certified_Autist]

Why did people think a 40ft tsunami would travel 3-5k miles and not be dissipated along the way again?

There are multiple recorded instances of tsunamis traveling thousands of miles over open water. 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was off the coast of Indonesia but affected Africa from Somalia to Madagascar, the 2011 earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami that affected Hawaii and the US West Coast. (both were relatively minor compared to a possible LaPalma collapse).

Yes, the force of a tsunami does dissipate somewhat over long distances, (as evidenced by Hawaii and California not getting rekt like Japan) but with the variables in the LaPalma situation a tsunami is still concerning. We're talking about an unstable chunk of rock roughly the size of Manhattan. (on the surface, the rock is not just a flat chunk, it goes deep underground). This very large pebble could slide into a section of ocean two miles deep, displacing an enormous amount of water on the way to the bottom. Estimates vary but they think this would create waves over 400 meters high at the impact site, and waves anywhere from 10-40 meters high by the time it reaches the East Coast.

Granted as others have noted this is the worst-case scenario that isn't guaranteed to happen. But it is a real possibility.

 

[Prosopagnosia]

So many comments in the youtube chats are like... these people really think the Americas are going to be wiped out the minute lava touches seawater.
I just can't.

People in chats are basically retarded, I was watching a volcano live special on YouTube and the chat was full of Braziliars arguing about Bolsonaro. In a chat about a volcano in Spain.

Why are they still in the house anyway? Trying to salvage belongings? You couldn't pay me to go there.

Well, these people are going to lose their homes and their most precious possessions. If I were in that situation, I would try to recover at least the family photo albums.

 

[Getting tard comed]

There are multiple recorded instances of tsunamis traveling thousands of miles over open water. 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was off the coast of Indonesia but affected Africa from Somalia to Madagascar, the 2011 earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami that affected Hawaii and the US West Coast. (both were relatively minor compared to a possible LaPalma collapse).

Yes, the force of a tsunami does dissipate somewhat over long distances, (as evidenced by Hawaii and California not getting rekt like Japan) but with the variables in the LaPalma situation a tsunami is still concerning. We're talking about an unstable chunk of rock roughly the size of Manhattan. (on the surface, the rock is not just a flat chunk, it goes deep underground). This very large pebble could slide into a section of ocean two miles deep, displacing an enormous amount of water on the way to the bottom. Estimates vary but they think this would create waves over 400 meters high at the impact site, and waves anywhere from 10-40 meters high by the time it reaches the East Coast.

Granted as others have noted this is the worst-case scenario that isn't guaranteed to happen. But it is a real possibility.

Thanks for explaining. It seems sensationalist to use the East coast due to all the Caribbean being in the way from Africa to New York. That's what's behind my question. If a 40ft wave hits the East Coast from Africa after hitting the Caribbean I think we have bigger worries than just the East Coast getting wrecked but what do I know? It's why I asked.

 

[General Disarray]

Somebody asked the Science (TM) over on plebbit about the chances of a tsunami, so I am cutting and pasting the top answer here (so you don't have to venture on over there. You're welcome <3)

I'm assuming this is in relation to various doomsday like scenarios floating around the internet and popularized in at least a few documentaries that a "megatsunami" might be generated by a flank collapse of La Palma which could impact the eastern US and western Europe? The origin of these overblown claims largely comes from Ward & Day, 2001. As highlighted in a variety of different subsequent studies, this analysis was deeply flawed and the purported risk of large scale tsunamis that could impact the US or Europe is grossly misrepresented. There are two main issues with the original Ward & Day paper (1) the assumption of a complete, essentially instantaneous flank collapse and (2) the details of the tsunami modelling. For the first, the geologic record of flank collapses of oceanic stratovolcanoes highlight that large ones are exceedingly rare (e.g., Pararas-Carayannis, 2002). Perhaps more importantly, detailed work on the deposits resultant from these, including a set associated with the Canary Islands (e.g., Hunt et al., 2013) highlight that these are typically multistage collapses, i.e., not everything slides in at once. Because the size of the tsunami scales with the volume of material displacing water, a multistage failure will not produce any where near the same size of tsunami as a single, large failure. Even assuming a single, large failure, the details of how the slide and resulting tsunami waves are modeled has large implications for the scale of the modeled tsunami that is generated. Several other modelling efforts of a large flank collapse of La Palma have highlighted that the predictions from Ward & Day are extremely exaggerated (e.g., Nieuwkoop, 2007, Lovholt & Gisler, 2008). Both of those papers highlight that a major flank collapse of La Palma could certainly generate dangerous tsunami waves for residents of the Canary Islands, but the chance that such an event could generate large tsunami waves that would have major impacts in Europe or the US is extremely unlikely. Dave Petley, who studies landslides and spends a lot of time trying to improve the communication of landslide hazards to the public, provided a nice summary of this all in his blog back when the Hunt paper came out. EDIT: Apparently Dave did a followup because the false rumors of a major flank collapse from La Palma potentially causing a devastating megatsunami refuse to die. EDIT 2: There is even a third set of two posts from Dave, here and here further trying to dispel this myth.

In short, the possibility of a megatsunami from a flank collapse of La Palma that would impact the US or Europe was grossly misrepresented by an early paper, which despite being proven wrong multiple times in multiple different way, the popular media has kept this particular "natural hazards ghost story" alive for the better part of 20 years. There is a real risk of tsunami from a flank collapse, but mainly if you live in the Canary Islands. So, if you live in the Canary Islands, then yes, caution is warranted both for the potential of an eruption or possible earthquakes or tsunamis associated with a possible eruption and you should be closely monitoring reputable sources of information (like INVOLCAN). If you do not live in the Canary Islands, then no, you probably should not be worried, and you should stop perpetuating this misguided idea.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Ongoing Reuters livestream of the eruption.

 

[Elysian]

I have the perfect song for this

 

[Certified_Autist]

Thanks for explaining. It seems sensationalist to use the East coast due to all the Caribbean being in the way from Africa to New York. That's what's behind my question. If a 40ft wave hits the East Coast from Africa after hitting the Caribbean I think we have bigger worries than just the East Coast getting wrecked but what do I know? It's why I asked.

Nah, assuming what we know about the situation is accurate, its actually not sensational to say it would have dire effects on the East Coast, which makes it even weirder that nobody in the media is talking about it. The Caribbean islands aren't between LaPalma and the US though. Only exceptions are the Bahamas which are "in front of" middle/south Florida, and they're mostly flat and low lying so not an obstacle. That's why the threat of this tsunami is a big deal because if it happens there's nothing in the way to stop it. Plus the East Coast has no real defenses (seawalls, etc) to stop any tsunamis, never mind one that is 30 meters tall.

The one thing we have going for us is that on the southern half of the coast basically every highway going inland is designed to be turned into a one-way evacuation route for hurricanes if needed. But the northern half doesn't have that, so people in Philly and New York will probably all drown while waiting in traffic jams.

That's assuming the tsunami actually happens of course, which is not guaranteed.

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

The island right now:

 

[Fanatical Pragmatist]

Why did people think a 40ft tsunami would travel 3-5k miles and not be dissipated along the way again?

I'll give you open ocean, which even then is tenuous, but I can't get behind the idea that the tsunami is going to travel over barrier island, salt marsh, city, forest & planted agricultural pine groves without losing any steam what so ever then fucking gain a few meters somehow to hop the LWR and ride to the Gulf coast of Florida all the while BTFO'ing DeSantis and saving everyone from the shenanigans of Florida Man forever and ever.