Already seeing some minor flooding in parts of California.
Be careful if you are anywhere near the Pacific Ocean!
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tsunami-advisory-San-Francisco-Bay-Area-Tonga-16777945.php
I just read about that. Wishing the best for all of you in that area. Be careful!
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“The National Weather Service said peak waves of one to two feet are possible from the event.”
And the advice is to move to higher ground? Seriously? That’s way less than the Japan earthquake in 2011 which was 4-6 feet in a few parts of CA.
Seems like someone is looking for another way to scare people and/or test their tsunami warning plans.
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My husband was hired by a local engineering firm to do the seismic design of a HUGE fish farm facility in California, right on the coast (he is registered in CA and this firm has no engineers with a CA license). After he agreed to do the job, he was informed he is also responsible to design it to withstand a tsunami! Ack. Quite a challenge. The job has been put on hold for a few months so it will be interesting to see how it progresses, especially after this event.
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Check out the video of Santa Cruz…again, it’s minor flooding. But folks live on boats here, and we received a text to evacuate all local marinas. No one is saying that it is comparable to Japan 2011 or the Indian Ocean 2004. But an evacuation “request” is not something to be taken lightly.
ETA: Several beaches in California are closed for the morning. Hopefully, after a few hours, any real issue will have passed. My sincere condolences to the people of Tonga and other areas affected by this.
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Of course, it matters how big a tsunami it must be designed for.
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It’s also not something that should be issued lightly. The pandemic has prompted all sorts of government agencies to go completely overboard about trivial risks. Compare the definitive nature of these statements to the much more muted reaction in 2011.
I would love to know all the metrics and analytics that go into tsunami-proofing something.
From the very minuscule knowledge I have, it is extremely hard to know when an event like an earthquake or a volcano is going to cause a tsunami. I will never forget the almost surreal December 26, 2004 tsunami affecting places near and far. Just watching what appeared to be a small wave propagate/amplify as it approached the shore makes you realize how much the ocean floor, the force of the event, etc etc go into determining how bad a tsunami is going to be.
It’s interesting because event the National Weather Service is saying they have some difficulty estimating the size of this tsunami because it originated from an underwater volcano and not an earthquake.
Again, if someone lives on the coast and has boats, cars, houses, families, or pets (in no particular order), I am sure they appreciated the warning. Losing my car or my house is non-trivial.
Flooding isn’t trivial.
Also, what precisely is the relevancy of 2011 to a friendly warning posted on a discussion forum that there is some current level of risk (and which has materialized in certain areas like the harbor area at Santa Cruz, CA)?
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We just were just advised that the “advisory” affects the beach communities and to assume 1-2 ft higher waves.
Since most of the SO Cal communities are not near the coast, (expensive real estate) it affects the beach areas.
NWS has said that the rip currents will be a hazard.
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Again, if all the tsunami warning center said was “warning, there may be minor flooding” (like some of these places experience during king tides when people know to move their cars) then that’s fine. But I think forcing evacuations and closing beaches should have a much higher threshold (significant danger to life) before action is enforced. It’s not this thread I’m objecting to, it is the language used by NWS in their tweets and news statements and the reactions of some CA authorities. What we absolutely don’t need from these agencies is the boy who cried wolf syndrome, given there’s a high likelihood of a devastating tsunami off the WA/OR coast eventually. There’s enough of that already with the pandemic in some places.
One person drowned in northern CA as a result of the 2011 earthquake because they went down on the spit at the mouth of a river to watch the waves. But I think even that doesn’t rise to the level where mandatory closures/evacuations need to be issued. It’s like someone climbing over the railings at the top of Yosemite Falls: a Darwin Award is sufficient.
The emergency alert on my phone this morning scared the bedoodles out of me. It definitely got my attention!
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As mentioned, even the NWS said it couldn’t precisely predict the intensity of the waves since this arose out of a volcano, and not an earthquake. I’d much prefer them to give this warning than not, especially on a Saturday morning where folks might be heading out to the beach and/or live near the water.
It was the failure to have an adequate warning system in place added to the Indian Ocean 2004 catastrophe, and I think governments of several countries with land bordering the Pacific and Indian Oceans have teamed up to make sure this wouldn’t happen again.
A pandemic has no relevance to this event.
And at least one town in CA is showing 4 foot waves. The point, as mentioned earlier, is that no one really knows how a tsunami can affect one place vs. another, as there are FAR too many variables to predict with certainty. I am very glad this warning was issued:
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And makes people more likely to turn these off/ignore them next time.
I will ask my husband what size of tsunami he is supposed to design for. I know there’s a tsunami expert who will give him forces to use, at least.
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Just checked our local ocean web cam and waves are definitely lower than during king tides, so nothing significant there. Not sure how it’s affecting the many marinas. (Everything looks wet because it rained last night.) The surfers are out!
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We are getting emails from relatives in the UK asking if we are in danger. And they know we live on top of a 500ft high hill. Crazy…
My family (UK & Australia) are asking if I’m “safe” - I’m 7 miles from the beach, so yes, I feel pretty safe, but I did say, today I’m happy that I don’t live at the beach. The ocean is very powerful and I respect it. I probably would not be hanging out waiting to see.
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live in the midwest; traveling to SF tomorrow staying literally on the bay. Are bay areas considered beach? is this supposed to be over today? thanks for any thoughts . . .
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Hopefully over today. The warning is to take heed and be careful. It definitely includes the Bay Area where we live.
Hopefully, if there are no other events in Tonga, the principal risk should end in a few hours.
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