Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Oct 23, 2022 - 10:10pm
kurtster wrote:
I remember that "Wave" in Crescent City.
We (my parents and brother and I) flew to Crescent City, California from Southern California a year after that happened. There were pictures in the airport of the "Wave" going across the runway.
We were on a little trip my parents friends, that had lots of money, paid for. They were taking us on a vacation to their "ranch" in Agnes, Oregon on the Rogue River... population at that time 28.
My first trip in an airplane! My first trip on a jet boat!
University of Minnesota teams are the Golden Gophers. Lions, Tigers, Badgers, Wolverines & Bears have gophers for snacks. Not to mention there is no such thing as a Golden Gopher. Unless it's a gopher actually made out of gold, in which case the predators would break their teeth & get an infection, suffer horribly & then die.
Tsunami is Japanese for Tidal Wave though so one misnomer was replaced by another
They are not just different words for the same thing...they have different origins. Tidal waves are not wind events...they are gravitation. Tides. It's not a misnomer. They also happen regularly. Wind can exacerbate, but aren't the "cause". Tsunami's are caused by earthquakes or volcanos underwater, and the shock from those events create ripples that turns into large waves. There are frequent tsunami warnings...all based on earthquake data. https://www.tsunami.gov/
Look, son. I got a few years on you and remember things a bit differently because I was around when certain things happened.
What I imparted in my comments was off the top of my head from knowledge learned way back in the mid 60's as a young teenage surfer in SoCal. I did not have to look anything up. I never said tidal waves were wind related events.
The term Tsunami was only recently adapted in my lifetime as the term to use for ocean going shock waves caused by seismic events.
A tsunami (pronounced soo-nah-mee) is a series of waves of extremely long wave length and long period generated in a body of water by an impulsive disturbance that vertically displaces the water. The term tsunami was adopted for general use in 1963 by an international scientific conference. Tsunami is a Japanese word represented by two characters: "tsu" and "nami." The character "tsu" means harbor, and the character "nami" means wave. In the past, tsunamis were often referred to as "tidal waves." The term "tidal wave" is a misnomer.
"harbour wave" is more in terms to express the general rise and fall of the water level in a harbour in Japan that results from the ebb and flow of the tide cycle. So one bad term was adapted to replace another bad term to call this seismic related ocean going shock wave, I remember the debate first hand.
Oceanography and especially marine geology was my primary interest growing up. I went to Florida Institute of Technology in 1970 in pursuit of the only available bachelor degree in Oceanography at that time. Did not finish and get that degree, but that was my goal back then. There was the draft and a war going on back then that got in the way of things.
Do you remember the "Tidal Wave" that hit Crescent City, California in 1964 ? I do. It is also when the name debate went full on. Just parts of my childhood experiences growing up in California.
Tsunami is Japanese for Tidal Wave though so one misnomer was replaced by another
They are not just different words for the same thing...they have different origins.
Tidal waves are not wind events...they are gravitation. Tides. It's not a misnomer. They also happen regularly. Wind can exacerbate, but aren't the "cause".
Tsunami's are caused by earthquakes or volcanos underwater, and the shock from those events create ripples that turns into large waves.
Tidal wave is kind of a vague term; nothing about it the word "tidal" seems to indicate "larger than usual". Anyhow, aren't most waves caused by the tides? Though, as Haresfur pointed out, tsunamis are not caused by the tides.
Actually wind is the generator of waves. Tides have nothing to do with them, except for what are known as tidal bores such as at places like the Bay of Fundy and on many rivers around the world.
The (wind) fetch is what determines the size and organization of waves. The longer the fetch, the more organized and regular the resulting waves. Storms have short or small fetches but can have large resulting waves when swells intermingle and compound.
The name Tsunami was applied to the waves mistakenly called Tidal Waves that are the result of earthquakes and underwater sea scape displacements. Tsunami is Japanese for Tidal Wave though so one misnomer was replaced by another.
Channel chop which I believe is what Haresfur was referring to about the kayaks is caused by a combination of wind, tide changes and currents in bays, channels formed by jetties and other coastal geological formations. Backwash (water changing direction and returning to sea) can cause waves to suddenly stand up on end and break in unusual ways.
Typically an organized wave will only break on the shore when the depth of the water reaches a certain minimum that is proportional to the height of the swell resulting in drag slowing down the swell which causes the wave to rise up and finally crest and break.
Regarding Tsunami's or Tidal Waves ... one sure fire way of detecting the presence of one is when all the water at the shore starts to rapidly recede and basically disappear. That is a clue to head for the hills, literally and as fast as you can. All of that water will be coming back in seconds as opposed to the 10 to 30 minutes it took for all that water to recede. The water comes back as a slab, not a wave. The water behind the face of the wall of water is the same height as the wall.
Yeah, the Australian ones are called cyclones. One weird thing is that they often take erratic tracks, making right angle bends, turning back on themselves...
