Any tsunami video I look at barely looks like a 20 feet wave hitting shore. But wikipedia tells me there have been dozens of 100+ feet tsunamis even in the last 10 years.
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Tsunamis don’t have a massive wave front. The are low long waves that flow onto land and and slowly rise as they flow inland.
The best explanation I’ve heard is the ‘height’ is how far above see level the wave stops.
so you have a large volume of water moving forward. Lets use a block of wood as our ‘water’.
The water on the bottom is moving along the ground and getting slowed down by friction. Lets use sandpaper as the ground. The force of the water moving along the ground slowly removes some of the force of the water, the sand paper removing some of the wood. The further it goes, the less force is left. Eventually the force dissipates and everything flows back to the ocean. The distance inland that it travelled, including how high it rose, is the ‘elevation’ you were referring to.
Tsunamis tend to be very stretched out. They may start as huge walls of water, but once they travel across the entire ocean, there can be hundreds of kilometres between the front of the wave and its highest point, unlike the kinds of waves you see at the beach, which are usually only a few metres wide.
Basically if you watch a video of a tsunami, you’ll see the water rushes in and keeps rising for several minutes, less like a wave at the beach, and more like a sped up video of a rising tide. When they say that the tsunami was 100ft tall, they basically mean that this is how much the water rose by.
Tsunamis tend to be very stretched out. They may start as huge walls of water, but once they travel across the entire ocean, there can be hundreds of kilometres between the front of the wave and its highest point, unlike the kinds of waves you see at the beach, which are usually only a few metres wide.
Basically if you watch a video of a tsunami, you’ll see the water rushes in and keeps rising for several minutes, less like a wave at the beach, and more like a sped up video of a rising tide. When they say that the tsunami was 100ft tall, they basically mean that this is how much the water rose by.
The best explanation I’ve heard is the ‘height’ is how far above see level the wave stops.
so you have a large volume of water moving forward. Lets use a block of wood as our ‘water’.
The water on the bottom is moving along the ground and getting slowed down by friction. Lets use sandpaper as the ground. The force of the water moving along the ground slowly removes some of the force of the water, the sand paper removing some of the wood. The further it goes, the less force is left. Eventually the force dissipates and everything flows back to the ocean. The distance inland that it travelled, including how high it rose, is the ‘elevation’ you were referring to.
The best explanation I’ve heard is the ‘height’ is how far above see level the wave stops.
so you have a large volume of water moving forward. Lets use a block of wood as our ‘water’.
The water on the bottom is moving along the ground and getting slowed down by friction. Lets use sandpaper as the ground. The force of the water moving along the ground slowly removes some of the force of the water, the sand paper removing some of the wood. The further it goes, the less force is left. Eventually the force dissipates and everything flows back to the ocean. The distance inland that it travelled, including how high it rose, is the ‘elevation’ you were referring to.
First off, the height of a wave cannot exceed the water’s depth. So a 100ft wave needs to be in at least 100ft water depth. Realistically, a 100ft wave would need around 135ft water depth.
Second, some tsunami height measurements are actually the [wave runup](http://www.coastalwiki.org/wiki/Wave_run-up), which is the maximum elevation that the water reaches on land, and not the actually height to the wave crest.
When they say 100 feet, it means that the wave reached 100 feet above sea level. This usually is at the point that the water loses all momentum(when everything is in gravitational potential energy), not when most of its energy is in kinetic energy moving forward.
First off, the height of a wave cannot exceed the water’s depth. So a 100ft wave needs to be in at least 100ft water depth. Realistically, a 100ft wave would need around 135ft water depth.
Second, some tsunami height measurements are actually the [wave runup](http://www.coastalwiki.org/wiki/Wave_run-up), which is the maximum elevation that the water reaches on land, and not the actually height to the wave crest.
First off, the height of a wave cannot exceed the water’s depth. So a 100ft wave needs to be in at least 100ft water depth. Realistically, a 100ft wave would need around 135ft water depth.
Second, some tsunami height measurements are actually the [wave runup](http://www.coastalwiki.org/wiki/Wave_run-up), which is the maximum elevation that the water reaches on land, and not the actually height to the wave crest.
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