Gavin Pearce wrote:
*yawn*. A foot and a half isn't going to be all *that* bad
Sorry to continue off topic:
Try to imagine ... a temporary very high tide, rather than a cresting wave. In addition to the "height", it's the wave-length you have to take into account. Tsunami's rarely become towering breaking waves.
Quite right. The other part is that the water becomes a very fast moving river, especially in places where it's not normally one. Watching the footage from the Santa Cruz harbor it wasn't the height that was a particular problem, but the fact that all of a sudden you had a 5-10 knot current. And this happened at low tide, so it would have been far worse if it happened at high tide. There was a pretty spectacular photo of the tsunami that appeared to be around the Emeryville flats. Only about 6 or so inches high, but massive. Had it been at high tide, it could have probably done some nasty things... like, oh for example, the sewage treatment plant next to the Bay Bridge comes to mind. Mike