What Is a Tsunami?

Tsunamis

A tsunami is a unusually large series of waves made in an ocean, or sea by an earthquake, a landslide or, (although highly unlikely) a meteorite impact. Tsunamis are more commonly known as tidal waves although they have nothing to do with tides.

If a tsunami is to reach the coast it can cause major destruction and devastation to any town, village or city in its path as unlike normal waves they don’t curl or break. They can cause damage hundreds of meters inland. The force of just one wave can cause houses and structurally sound buildings collapse.

Tsunamis are not like the waves you usually find rolling along an ocean. Those are created by wind offshore. Although some seas create “large” waves these are rather small compared to tsunamis. A tsunami can reach up to 100km high in open ocean, that’s around the length of 910 football pitches and they are faster than any human at 700kmp/h!

As a tsunami draws nearer to the coast it grows several hundred meters, so a wave barely visible in minutes nearer the coast. Just before it hit’s the sea will draw back and expose the ocean floor. The first wave may not be the largest though, another one larger may arrive in between 10 and 60 minutes

A majority of tsunamis occur in the pacific ocean because the plate is a majority covered in water. Most of these happen in the “ring of fire”, a ring of volcanoes that are statistically the most active on earth

Because of Japans location it is struck by a tsunami at least once a year. It is also the country with the most reported casualties due to them in   the last thousand years, now it has developed warning systems though other areas in this “ring” are not as well equipped.

If you take the events of boxing Day 2006 you can see that when they do they are catastrophic. The quake of Sumatra flooded hundreds of thousands of miles of coastal regions in the area and kept a death toll of 280,00 lives. Research has shown that is proper warning had been in place...