Volcano! Tsunami!

[FlyMeAway]

Tonga is approximately 5700 statute miles from Seattle, and the volcano shockwave traveled at about 830mph. So about 4:30 AM, our on-board barometer (courtesy Vesper Cortex remote monitoring) registered this cool spike (see image linked below; too big to paste as an image). H/T to NWS Anchorage which made me think of checking this and provided guidance around the math/timing/speed.

https://tws16q.sn.files.1drv.com/y4...FQbQtrj9ezEqBmWepkBJhmHTHg6ahBYQ/IMG_4397.jpg

From what I heard, the surge on the west coast was basically a non-event despite warnings. Still, the total nerd in me thought that shockwave was cool to see.

ETA: it was about 4:30 AM local, about 3:30 AM AKST. Fun facts I learned today: because of how great circles work, Anchorage and Seattle are roughly equidistant from Tonga (Anchorage is only about 100 miles farther). Also, depending on atmospheric conditions sound can travel faster or slower than the generally accepted average.

 

[Maggie Anne]

Very cool. As a seismologist in my previous life I was interested in the speed of sound in various materials, mostly air, water and rock. Depending on the temperature of the atmosphere it would be around 1130 ft/sec or 770 mph, very close to your calculation.

 

[CaspersCruiser]

Interesting! Thanks.

 

[Hydraulicjump]

Not completely a non event on the west coast. Call up videos of Santa Cruz harbor. Unlike the tsunami of 10 years ago-which dislodged and sank boats and sucked them out to sea-the boats did alright. The cars in the parking lots next to the water, not so much.

And if you want to track something fun, look at your local barometric pressure record yesterday. You will see the blast wave from the volcano arrive. Very impressive.

Just a healthy reminder that nature bats last.

Jeff

 

[FlyMeAway]

And if you want to track something fun, look at your local barometric pressure record yesterday. You will see the blast wave from the volcano arrive. Very impressive.
Jeff

I don't think you opened my image link or read the full post 🙂

 

[Kimberly Dawn]

Here's a link to the YouTube Santa Cruz tsunami video... impressive!

https://youtu.be/bNX3crW-qYQ

Also, an interesting local news account at Sea-Tac Airport showing how the foggy environment was temporarily blown clear to immediately return to fog once the atmospheric pressure returned to normal.

Bob & Kim
Kimberly Dawn

 

[Kimberly Dawn]

Follow-up video:

https://youtu.be/2t00O6PyRW0

 

[SJI Sailor]

Very cool. This led me to wonder about how to get alerts for such events on the boat. So far the best option appears to be the FEMA app. You can set targeted locations, so the warnings are specific, and can selected which alerts to receive at a very granular level. So it doesn't constantly alert for irrelevant things.

I tried alerts from the Tsunami.gov Twitter account but they sometimes send out dozens of messages, and can't be geographically filtered, so they are annoying. Similarly for weather radio alerts that warn of too many things.

Other ideas? Eventually I may try one of the email/SMS subscription services, too.