In 1914, a 200ft wave at Trinidad, California (2014) | Hacker News Reader

In 1914, a 200ft wave at Trinidad, California (2014)

briantissot.com

83 pointscurtis23 comments

The Really Big One: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...

Cool fact -- this article's author won the Pulitzer for best feature writing in 2016. [0]

That said, Cascadia subduction zone is one of the most underrated threat to the western sea-board of the entire North American continent, imo.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Feature_Wri...

Peter Watts' science-fiction novel "Starfish" is a story of numerous, cascading distaters, one of which is a serious earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Short description and links to commercial vendors on Goodreads [0], and the complete novel available as an eBook is available from the author [1].

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66479.Starfish

[1] http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

Very interesting read, thank you.

I wonder what the effect would be on the Japanese coast? I live only a mile away from the ocean in Japan. From a similar quake in 1700 it looks like it would take 8 hrs to get here so I’d probably have plenty of time to evacuate. Perhaps I should be more worried about quakes off the coast here instead.

>I’d probably have plenty of time to evacuate

I agree. You'd have enough time to figure out your contingency and evacuation given your location. Hawaii would certainly be hit first thereby giving folks living in Japan like yourself plenty of forewarning.

This is really scary. I can’t believe this is not more widely known given that its wayyy overdue with a long historical record.

It is not really "overdue" and interpreting the earthquake record is quite difficult. I would suggest this short (2 page) 2017 GSA Today[1] article for a decent write up by geologists for the general public. It says the odds of a large Cascadia earthquake in the next 50 years is between a 7% (using the average recurrence over the last 10k years) and 40% (using the average recurrence in the current earthquake cluster).

I would also add a possibility that the article doesn't mention. They discuss clusters of earthquakes and you can see them in the paleoearthquake history plot. If these clusters really exist and are persistent, it looks like we are near the end of a cluster. The 1700 earthquake could have been the last one in the current cluster and the next earthquake might happen over 500 years from now.

[1]https://doi.org/10.1130/GSATG350GW.1

You might also find this article about "One-Hundred-Foot Wednesday" interesting: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/DESPERATE-RACE-FOR-SU...

60.96 meters

Presumably you're joking but since I've seen real examples of this, I'll mention that that's false precision and should be 60 metres.

thanks

Another crazy wave happened in Lituya Bay 60 years ago. 520 meters tall (1710 feet). Apparently a father and a son survived it, there's an interview with them on YouTube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_megatsunami

> the sudden displacement of water resulted in a megatsunami that washed out trees to a maximum elevation of 520 metres

That reads to me that it ran uphill to an altitude of 520 metres, rather than that the wave itself was a 520m tall wall of water.

Indeed. The same article gives a height of 30m for the wave.

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

There is a fjord in Norway that is considered to be at high risk of experiencing a landslide-driven tsunami of similar magnitude:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geirangerfjord#Rock_slides

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmfs7LesQos

An amusing little sentence to end on:

> Event will be cancelled if hazardous weather conditions are predicted.

Unlikely for the wave to be anywhere near this tall. Rather a smaller wave hit the cliff face and water was pushed over the top.

Of course it is unlikely but the history of the world is long and statistically it is a certainty.

I mean unlikely as in it's a poor fit for the observations. If the waves where actually that tall you would see very different effects.

For reference their are cool photos showing giant sprays around lighthouses from minor waves.

and it disregards the actual sea level during the storm, as that could have significantly lowered the base height

We kinda have big weather fluctuations these days (Referring to global warming). How long till we have record wave fluctuations? You better get your surfboards ready.

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