The water reached higher than the Sears Tower

September 30, 2016 6:44 PM

Lituya Bay is a narrow fjord on the southeast coast of Alaska. In the early 1950s, a geologist found evidence that seemed to indicate tsunamis had occurred there in the past, but of seemingly impossible size. Then in 1958, an earthquake showed what a mega-tsunami was really like....
posted by Chrysostom (36 comments total)

Seeing a huge geologic event is very humbling. It's not going too far to say that watching the Mt. St. Helens eruption (from Council Crest, in Portland) changed my life. It put a lot of things into proportion for me.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:09 PM on September 30, 2016 [15 favorites]

The discussion of the glacier flying up into the air, and the mountain peak falling off, that is amazing stuff. I think it was probably better in the water, because of force absorption. I imagine standing anywhere on land, would have broken your knees just before you drowned. I am reminded of the Islanders near Phuket, Thailand. When the Tsunami event began, the eldest among them remembered what to do when all the creeks dry and go out to sea, all of a sudden; and that was go to the highest point.
posted by Oyéah at 7:17 PM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Previously on metafilter - do click through from that comment to mefite Rumple's blog posts on PNW archeology, and see his post on the 1958 Lituya Bay event.
posted by rtha at 7:20 PM on September 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

Holy shit Chocolate Pickle you saw Mt. St. Helens go off from the top of Council Crest?! That's amazing!
posted by gucci mane at 7:35 PM on September 30, 2016

Interesting read, to be sure.

Did anyone else notice that in the final picture the island appears to still be forested? I would have thought it would have been barren after the event.

(Also, was it just me, or did anyone else have the image of Calvin narrating the next disaster on the unsuspecting village immediately come to mind while reading the FPP?)
posted by vignettist at 7:45 PM on September 30, 2016

Nature is fuckin' metal.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:51 PM on September 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

Did anyone else notice that in the final picture the island appears to still be forested?

Oh yeah, that is interesting. I wonder if it's because we're seeing the lee side of it from where the wave would have hit, and the damaged area is hidden from view.
posted by Flashman at 8:24 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ironic that the only boat that immediately recognized that shit was going down and time to leave was the only one destroyed -- I'm guessing that by the time the wave reached them it was too full of debris for them to survive?
posted by tavella at 8:31 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Reading this got my heart pumping!
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:15 PM on September 30, 2016

It could be because the luckless Sunmore was facing the other direction, so the wave hit it stern-first. The other boats may have been facing the wave, so they kind of sliced into it with their bows.
posted by Kevin Street at 11:23 PM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

What an incredible, eerie, awe-inspiring read. I love "weird Earth" spots and I had no idea this place existed.
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:12 AM on October 1, 2016

Wow! Thanks for posting!
posted by persona au gratin at 1:47 AM on October 1, 2016

Fact: Nature is bananas
posted by aubilenon at 2:15 AM on October 1, 2016

Lituya = Ltu.áa, “Lake inside the Point” NOT the false translation “no lake within” in the article. Yay for wikipedia-level journalism.
posted by D.C. at 3:01 AM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nature is fuckin' metal.
Several, in fact.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:50 AM on October 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Wave (Bølgen) 2015 is an okay Norwegian tsunami film on Netflix. Pretty typical plot for a catastrophe with all the usual tropes but fairly well executed and acted.
posted by srboisvert at 5:07 AM on October 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Between this post, Rumple's previous posts and this article in the New Yorker from July 2015, you couldn't pay me to live in the PNW. It's going to be a colossal nightmare.
posted by yoga at 5:12 AM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I was terrified just reading this.
posted by biggreenplant at 6:25 AM on October 1, 2016

It looks like they fixed the translation for Lituya.

What a terrifying scenario. I shudder to think what the currents are like at the mouth of that bay during the event, given the kind of tidal currents described under normal circumstances.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:56 AM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

It looks like they fixed the translation for Lituya.

Ah, they read this thread. After I posted my comment above I noticed he has a reference list at the bottom of the article, which makes them better than most magazines/newspapers (online or print), so I retract my snide “wikipedia-level journalism” comment.
posted by D.C. at 10:05 AM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I shudder to think what the currents are like at the mouth of that bay during the event, given the kind of tidal currents described under normal circumstances

It says one of the boats was carried over the spit into the open ocean (where it sank, though its inhabitants survived which is a pretty nuts thing to have lived through)
posted by aubilenon at 10:31 AM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks for linking to my blog post about this, rtha. I did a follow up one on Tlingit perspectives on the Lituya events here.
posted by Rumple at 11:14 AM on October 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

Thanks Rumple for your blog post; I love the animation here
posted by saucysault at 11:18 AM on October 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

It could be because the luckless Sunmore was facing the other direction, so the wave hit it stern-first.

Also, looking at the animation linked above, I thought that perhaps the wave caught them in the narrower part of the bay where it was higher.
posted by hat_eater at 11:34 AM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

such awesome timing! I was just going down the wikipedia rabbithole about tectonic plates et al, last night. this is a really fascinating story and I have made my plans to watch The Wave as soon as possible!

I agree with yoga re living in PNW. I feel much safer here in the SF Bay Area on our non-tsunami-forming strike-slip fault
posted by supermedusa at 11:38 AM on October 1, 2016

The wall of water lifted the bow of the Edrie almost straight up into the air. The anchor chain snapped. Ulrich snatched up the radiophone and shouted into it, “Mayday! Mayday! This is the Edrie in in Lituya Bay. All hell has broken loose in here. I think we’ve had it. Goodbye.”

I'm astonished that anyone would have the presence of mind to radio for help when IMMINENT DOOM is rushing toward them like that.
posted by indubitable at 11:56 AM on October 1, 2016

I'm astonished that anyone would have the presence of mind to radio for help when IMMINENT DOOM is rushing toward them like that.

Pilots (both air and sea) tend to be that way. Or they don't last very long.
posted by valkane at 12:03 PM on October 1, 2016

I have a tremendous fear of tsunamis for some reason, so a megatsunami is a big ol pile of NOPE. Great read, by the way.
posted by brundlefly at 12:21 PM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

> I did a follow up one on Tlingit perspectives on the Lituya events here.

So interesting! Thanks, Rumple!
posted by rtha at 12:40 PM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

520m! Thats 13 times higher than the Tohoku tsunami in 2011...
posted by thefoxgod at 12:48 PM on October 1, 2016

For a minute, I thought that this photo was of the boats before the megatsunami hit—i.e., that the mountains in the background were the wave. Then I realized that was just an image of boats on the bay in front of the mountains. But that's probably not far off from what the wave actually did look like!
posted by limeonaire at 1:24 PM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

520m! Thats 13 times higher than the Tohoku tsunami in 2011...

520m was the height that the water sloshed up the sides of the inlet, not the height of the wave itself.

The other boats may have been facing the wave, so they kind of sliced into it with their bows.

Only one of the three boats didn't sink; the second boat that stayed in the inlet and faced the wave disappeared without a trace, which I guess is why we don't know what evasive action they tried.
posted by Flashman at 1:58 PM on October 1, 2016

While I'm self linking, the destruction of Kwalate Village on the central coast of B.C. is another similar event, with far greater loss of life, while this mining incident (GIF) shows, at a much reduced scale, the waves that can be produced by rockfall.
posted by Rumple at 2:07 PM on October 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

520m was the height that the water sloshed up the sides of the inlet, not the height of the wave itself.

Right, thats the run-up height, yes? (how far the wave surges above sea level) Tohoku was 39m run-up, so the run-up was 13 times more.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:18 PM on October 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

"...the second boat that stayed in the inlet and faced the wave disappeared without a trace"

According to the article the boat that tried to leave the inlet (the Sunmore) is the one that disappeared. The Edrie stayed in the inlet and made it through relatively undamaged. The Badger was carried out of the inlet by the wave and sank, but its crew survived.
posted by Kevin Street at 9:28 PM on October 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

While we’re on the subject of cataclysms in the Pacific Northwest, I direct your attention to Washington’s Dry Falls.

A few thousand years ago, it was the site of a spectacular waterfall. If you took every river on Earth, channeled them into one torrent, and sent that off a cliff, that would be merely one tenth of the flow at Dry Falls at the end of the last ice age.
posted by Fongotskilernie at 3:57 AM on October 4, 2016 [2 favorites]