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Comment by dougb5 | Hacker News Reader

Sutro Tower's height is boosted by the fact that it sits on Mt. Sutro. It reaches 1,811 feet above sea level, just higher than the tallest building in the US (One World Trade Center in NYC, at 1776 feet).

I like to mention this fun fact to my visiting friends from New York, conveniently overlooking any higher-elevation buildings in Denver.

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Since it can be commonly viewed from literal sea level (like the shoreline of the ocean or San Francisco Bay), it’s more apropos.

Am I misreading this or are you giving a measure where a single story house in Nebraska would be taller than Sutro or WTC?

What's the point in introducing Nebraska when they already said the same thing about Denver? The point is to be a humorous comparison and it works better than most such comparisons in that regard because the tower is both actually pretty tall itself plus only 3 miles from the ocean.

Depends what you’re measuring. Sutro Tower’s prominence[0] is almost certainly greater than the house in Nebraska and probably most of the buildings in Denver too (though possibly there’s some comms equipment or ski infrastructure that could beat it?)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_prominence

The point is that the relative elevation difference is more similar to skyscrapers. You look down from there (or even Twin Peaks) and you are towering over sea level locations and can see extremely far on clear days.

broadcast facilities in the VHF/TV range bands benefit most from what's called HAAT - height above average terrain. This is why the midwest has 1800' tall guyed broadcast towers in places that don't have any conveniently placed mountains. And why the broadcast sites near Seattle and Vancouver are all on mountains, or at least large-ish sized hills.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_above_average_terrain

Yeah this makes no sense at all. A tent at base camp Everest is significantly taller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

Hence 'conveniently overlooking'.

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