Why do tidal waves or tsunamis in real life not look like the huge waves in the movies?

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Whenever there’s a tsunami in the movies it’s always a 100 foot tall wall of water instead of the rolling waves we see in real life. Could a wave actually get that high and make it to land?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The big breaking waves you see in the movies or more often in surfing videos are the result of various, but extremely specific sea floor geography. Those conditions just don’t exist on most sea shores around the world. That’s why surfers travel to the areas with big waves, not just their nearest coast.

See the force of waves is almost entirely lateral. The things that cause them to curl over and break is either the wind behind the wave pushing it over or the sea floor redirecting the energy up at such an angle that it creates a narrow but tall wave. Again those sea floor conditions just don’t exist most places. So tsunamis just end up being really wide and short waves.

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