tsunami photo sequence...

[mr_gyptian]

Yeah, keep in mind how fast that wave is moving too. It moved at 500mph in the open ocean and is obviously slowing a little as it comes in, but still maybe moving at 200-300mph? If that sucker in the first photo is 1.5 miles away, that only gives a person on the beach 18-27 seconds to get to higher ground. Grim.

Is this possible? I mean seriously. my parents saw this on dateline and I call bull shit. what is the highest recorded windspeed? 230mph at Mt. Washington?

[hucksquaw]

it would be hard for anyone who didnt know better to known what was going on untill they saw the water coming at them.. and at that point you dont have time to do anything but stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.... so sad..

anybody know of organizations that support anyone who wants to go over and do volunteer work?? ive been looking into it to go help clean beaches and rebuild houses over this summer but its hard to find organizations that do this...

CHECK OUT THIS VID (click on 61mb or 38mb windowsmedia link)

crazy pic..\/\/

(edited out): my bad lane

[Lurch]

Is this possible? I mean seriously. my parents saw this on dateline and I call bull shit. what is the highest recorded windspeed? 230mph at Mt. Washington?

When a wave is in deep water no water is actually moving. The wave is just energy moving through the water so it can travel very fast. It's just like a wave moving though a rope. When the wave get's close to shore the front of it runs aground causing it to slow down while the tail end is still traveling faster. This is what causes a wave to "break" and start actually moving water.

[L7]

I saw that on the news last night. Their 3 adult kids were down there with them but not clear if they were right with them that morning. They all lived.

I know the images from movies are big curling breakers as opposed to surges. Those shots look more like the breaker than I would have expected.

I knew of tsunamis and have been chased off the water by the threat of one. I never knew about the water running out beforehand until just a couple of months before the asian one. I saw a show on Discovery about one in 1929 where the cove went dry before the wave rushed in.

I don't know if I would have figured it out right away but I have to think my spidey senses would have kept me from going closer. Maybe still a deer in the headlights I suppose.

[ScottG]

When a wave is in deep water no water is actually moving. The wave is just energy moving through the water so it can travel very fast. It's just like a wave moving though a rope. When the wave get's close to shore the front of it runs aground causing it to slow down while the tail end is still traveling faster. This is what causes a wave to "break" and start actually moving water.

Pretty close. Actually with regular waves, each water molecule makes a little circular path (that's how they transmit the wave energy to the next molecule), so they do move fractionally (but they end up pretty close to where they started). As you go deeper under the wave, the little orbital path is smaller and smaller. Thats why the water is calm when you scuba under waves.

Seismic or lanslide (Tsunami type) waves are very different in that the water molecules are moving all the way to the bottom of the ocean.
This is why they can be imperceptible on a boat in very deep water, and why they jack up so high and have so much mass once they hit shallower water.

As for regular waves breaking, it is more accurate to say the deeper water molecules slow down when they feel bottom and the surface molecules are travelling faster, so the top of the wave pitches and breaks.
The bottom (not front) runs aground and the top (not tail) moves faster.

[LegoSkier]

Is this possible? I mean seriously. my parents saw this on dateline and I call bull shit. what is the highest recorded windspeed? 230mph at Mt. Washington?

Simple physics. The more dense a material is, the faster waves can propagate though that medium. Regular ocean waves are caused by the transfer of energy from a slow medium (air) and a faster one (water) so they don't travel as fast. Tsunamis are caused by the transfer of energy from a real fast medium (ground) and a slower one (water) so they travel way faster.

[MacDaddy]

crazy pic..\/\/

call me stupid but are those people smiling? they actually look they are laughing, perhaps not knowing they are about to die?

[Lane Meyer]

crazy pic..\/\/

False. River wave in China used as Tsunami-stand in

Not your fault, Huck, but it really bugs me when people use photoshop to make false images of terrible natural disatsers that claimed so many innocent lives. Please edit that picture out so the fallacy is not perpetuated.

And Mr. G - that speed data is entirely true according to the many peer-reviewed papers I've read on the subject (at least in open water - the "breaking" or surging waves on the beaches probably travel at luch lesser speeds than 200 mph due to the toe of the wave dragging on the shallows for several kilmometers). Overall, though, water is a much denser medium than air, thereby able to transmit energetic waveforms generated from sudden vertical uplift of the seafloor (from the earthquake) at such high velocities.

When I was working for the Research Corp. of the Univ. of Hawai`i last winter on the Big Island, some of my co-workers were involved in a publc-safety effort to create videos shown on cable access and in local schools to try and dissuade surfers from attemtping to surf tsunami waves, because, we you can see from the original pics in this thread, it is impossible to do so. Thanks Hollywood!! MORONS.

[bossass]

honestly, if you were on the beach and the water level rapidly started decreasing, would you know what was happening? I mean, we all would after this tragedy, but I know that I would have had no clue. I would have been one of the poor bastards running around on the tidal flats. By the time everyone understood what was happening, it was too late.

I'll second that. Where I lived in SoCal the low, low tides would suck the water out like a hundred yards and you could run around in the same location you would catch waves during high tide. I could imagine beaches elsewhere going through even more drastic changes at low tide, especially if the beach had a real slight incline (ie. some beaches you can walk out 200 yards and be only waist deep). So, if I was vacationing in Thailand, or wherever that was, it would strike me as a very drastic tide, but I don't think I would've thought to be alarmed. Now I know better.

[jayfrizzo]

call me stupid but are those people smiling? they actually look they are laughing, perhaps not knowing they are about to die?

I'm guessing that pic is fake.

[Lane Meyer]

I'm guessing that pic is fake.

It is. See three posts up.

[ScottG]

www.snopes.com

god bless that site.
too many folks regurgitate and forward internet shit that aint half believable.

[Lane Meyer]

Couldn't agree more. I got the "deep sea creatures washed up from Tsunami" mail today (also on Snopes' tsunami page). Fucking morons. Wrong fucking ocean, even.

[basom]

well i'm glad to know that these two have, in fact, become real friends.

[Telenater]

Simple physics. The more dense a material is, the faster waves can propagate though that medium. Regular ocean waves are caused by the transfer of energy from a slow medium (air) and a faster one (water) so they don't travel as fast. Tsunamis are caused by the transfer of energy from a real fast medium (ground) and a slower one (water) so they travel way faster.

Actually, density isn't as big a factor as elasticity. And higher density actually slows a waves propagation. However in most cases the increased elasticity (elastic modulus) of a higher density medium results in faster wave speeds.

[Turn Up The Gravity!]

I just saw this sequence on cnn.com. They pulled the images off of the digital camera of a Canadian couple that died in the tsunami.

cnn.com story

Died in tsunami, indeed.
...about two seconds after that last pic.

[Ubersheist]

Actually, density isn't as big a factor as elasticity. And higher density actually slows a waves propagation. However in most cases the increased elasticity (elastic modulus) of a higher density medium results in faster wave speeds.

How do you figure? My understanding is that if a wave is transmitted from a low density medium to a high density medium, the wave speed always speeds up. A high density, low elasticity medium like solid granite propagates waves far faster then a high density, higher elasticity material like rubber or the earth's mantle.

Does anyone have any equations? Any physics students out there?