Hacker News Reader

Comment by ninetyninenine | Hacker News Reader

I think you’re out of touch. A tsunami is a wave both from a pedantic perspective and an intuitive one and most people aren’t deceived into thinking that tsunamis aren’t dangerous at all because it’s a wave. That’s just made up garbage.

You’re like coming up to me and saying hurricane is not wind because it’s dangerous to think of a hurricane as only wind.

Dude. Nobody is thinking hurricanes are just chill just because hurricanes are wind. This is a fucking non-issue.

I think what you’re trying to say is that the wave length of a tsunami is much longer than the amplitude even though the amplitude is still epically high. But don’t try to conflate this with a safety issue of people dying because somebody called it a “wave” that’s just garbage.

View on HN

So, I’m sorry that I evidently didn’t manage to convey my point effectively. The problem is that wave is accompanied by a measurement that deceptively buries the lede.

Everyone knows hurricanes are wind. So they look for the wind speed to understand the threat. And it’s effective at characterizing the threat. A 100mph wind is going to be similarly destructive as any other 100mph wind. It works and is semantically and linguistically accurate.

Everyone knows a tsunami is a wave, and it is a strong intuition to believe that a wave is defined by its height. , and the height of the tsunami is actually one of the most widely reported metrics. But intuition about the effects of a tsunami by wave height is dangerously wrong. A tsunami is not at all similar to the vast, vast majority of waves in character and effect. Its speed and length at way, way out of band, and are seldom reported.

My understanding is the most deadly/destructive parts of hurricanes are usually:

1. the storm surge, the potential wall of water brought by the continuous winds and waves near the shore, followed by 2. the flooding from heavy rains, then 3. followed by the wind.

So your example might also be hitting the same issue you're trying to avoid.

Note, the worst storm surge is from the eye towards the side where the winds are blowing in the direction of the shore. That's only part of the area with the peak winds.

Good points. Where I am at it’s mostly the wind because I am a well drained higher elevation, so I’m sure that coloured my perception. But you are right, the storm surge and flooding also do a great deal of damage.

Idk. I don't live anywhere where tsunamis are an issue but seeing measurements like a 1m wave does make me wonder about waves I see at the beach that are that high regularly. I find myself going "oh not so bad then" only to read about thousands of people being evacuated and major damage

Reply on news.ycombinator.com