Why do tsunamis (20~ft) cause more damage and flooding than the waves that surfers surf (world record 86ft)?
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The height doesn’t matter as much as how much water the wave carries.
A normal surface wave is… Just waviness of the surface. It can be tall but it’s only as wide as it looks, so it only carries as much water as you can immediately see.
A tsunami is a gigantic mass of water pushed by a geological event. Even if it doesn’t look tall, it’s because it covers such a large area that it just kind of becomes “the surface”. It is really deep, though. It’s only noticeable when it is forced up by the shore and rushes inland.
Just compare videos of how much water retreats before a tsunami (the sea can retreat hundreds of meters to kilometers) vs. a normal wave (sub-meter to a few meters) to get an idea of the difference in scale.
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