Lituya Bay has been the site of frequent large volume landslides and tsunamis during the last 1,000 years. What makes this hazard most worrying is how similar other sections of the Alaskan coastline look to this bay, meaning that a similar landslide + tsunami could also occur there.
Once again I must send my compliments to you for providing such educational videos. I am always impressed by your topics and the way you explain it. Love your channel. 💕
Glad you covered this amazing Lituya Bay event, and we can thank geologist Don Miller for his early investigations and images. His original 1960 paper is linked in one of your citations: Don J. Miller (1960), "Giant Waves at Lituya Bay, Alaska"
Chat GPT sent me on a crazy adventure and it talked about Lituya Bay Tsunami and I had to learn more. This video was very well done and I really enjoyed it! Thanks and keep it up 👍
Thank you very much for this video. I heard about the incident before but have never seen good graphics or a well worked out scientific description. Never underestimate what large masses can do when they are moving ...
@@tryscience Yes, they were bad. And the book about the disaster made it feel unnerving. Plus, the entrance to the bay through the sand spits is dodgy. There are a few wrecks there.
I have a video here somewhere of me on a Coast Guard ship in this bay. Anchored by the island in the middle. This was 1995 and the tree line from the wave was still super obvious even then. Had a grizzly walk out when we were there as well.
There is an extinct volcano Off the coast of Africa that's ready to slide into the Atlantic Ocean generating a mega tsunami 1000 feet plus expected to hit the coast of Florida the rest will be history
Thanks for this. I read about the Lituya Bay event when researching for a kayak trip to Icy Bay back in the 1990s. It’s interesting to see discussions pop up in video. I recall a recent expedition into the bay following what I thought was another recent large slide, though I don’t recall the specifics. Interesting to hear of the Taan Fjord slide. I know the glaciers have receded considerably since I was there, but I was still struck at the time by the raw and recently uncovered land from the already vastly receded glaciers. I suspect the site of the recent Taan slide/tsunami was not directly adjacent to water when I was there, but as your Lituya discussion demonstrates, it may well have calved a large portion of the glacier had it occurred ~25 years ago.
Let's not forgot that the last time a mega tsunami hit the planet was...in October 17, 2015 in Alaska...and it made absolutely no news anywhere even though it was the 4th largest ever recorded on earth. Correction: Another one hit Greenland in 2017, admittedly that was 6th largest, still interior to the 2015 disaster.
Wow! Thanks for paying attention and relating this information. Very nice of you and caring! As some of us with inquiring minds do need to know. Blessings!
Been there. It's an amazing place. One thing you didn't mention - there were fishing boats in the bay for the 1958 incident. One actually survived. It did 360's out over the bar!! There are two peaks on the island that's out in the middle. The wave jumped the ridge between them on its way out. The bay is still regularly used by fishing vessels escaping the weather. Between there and Cross Sound, there's no place to hide. Side stripe shrimp as big as prawns off the west end of the island. Delicious.
You're right about it being an amazing place. We called it the eighth wonder of the world. And the first thing we did once we got there was to throw out a shrimp pot. Although what we brought up were mostly cocktail shrimp, with maybe 4 or 5 prawns. Maybe you used better bait. We just used a can of cat food.
@@orangemaleoscar2651 I was there in the mid-seventies. If I remember correctly, we dropped the pot just off of the west end of the island. The cliff there goes almost straight down, at least 20 fathoms. There's a lot of game in the area too. Must have been a couple of dozen goats way up the exposed rock on the SE side of the bay. Saw a couple of moose over by the old cabin. Bear tracks everywhere. I climbed to one of the peaks on the island. The moss was so deep and spongy you could have belly flopped on it. You almost expect to see fairies and leprechauns.
@@scottryals3191 I was there in 1981. And boy do I remember the bear tracks. Especially when I was on shore picking huckleberries. I never saw a bear, although somebody told us they saw one swimming towards the island. Did you ever fill your fresh water tank from the little waterfall that spilled into the bay from what I assume was glacial runoff? At the time I was leery of drinking it. But now I realize it was probably some of the healthiest water on the planet. I wonder what the glaciers look like now.
I remember as a young boy at school being absolutely fascinated by this event. I would go to the school library and read about it. As a lifelong surfer I could never get the wave height of 1700 feet out of my head.
The wave wasn't that high, rather, the momentum of the water pushed it that far up the hill. Sloshing is a correct way of looking at it, as the kinetic energy in the water is converted to potential energy at the barrier as it is countered by gravity. The potential energy then returns to kinetic as it moves back across or down the bay The wave in the bay may have only been 100 ft high or so. Along the west coast, a 1ft actual tsunami wave at the coast will often rise to 5 or 6 ft up river as the "volume" of water is compressed into a narrow channel through a funneling action. The damage of a wave is a function of volume, velocity, time, and barrier constraints.
@@robertslugg8361 yes its very interesting how energy distributes itself. There is footage on YT the day after the Japan tsunami in 2011 a small pulse wave entering a canal behind houses in Hawaii and it's only about a foot high but it just proceeds to make its way along, incredible. I think the canal is the one near Kailua on Oahu as Ive been there a few times, may not be, but looked familiar.
Wow never heard of this before, I can't even imagine the scale of such a wave. Kind of makes me hope another one happens soon and someone can get it on video (so long as no one gets hurt lol).
Wow what an amazing video. My only complaint is that it wasn't longer. But you bet I'm gonna binge watch as many of these as I can now. Also if you haven't already done one, I'd love to see a video about the geological history of the Great Lakes and/or the Niagara Escarpment, which the Niagara Falls go over. As I understand it, the area around the tip of the Bruce Peninsula near Tobermory in Ontario also has some of the oldest rocks in the world. That might make an interesting video as well.
I find the geology of the area around the north-eastern US to be pretty interesting. Could you do a topic on the Adirondacks and how they came to be, having heard that they formed recently geologically. Also Quebec has the Monteregian Hills which are also neat in regards to how they formed.
The Adirondacks are part of some of the most ancient mountain ranges in the world. Created before the Atlantic Ocean was born. I believe the highlands of Scotland were part of the same formation. I believe it was around 250,000,000 years ago.
Mount Royal in the heart of my own Montreal (and that's indeed how Montreal derives its name) is one of the Monteregian Hills, and the others are all not so far away. They are a chain of very ancient (and thankfully extinct) volcanoes that extends from the ocean near Bermuda through New Hampshire and on to northeast Ontario. As such, they are of a different origin from the Adirondacks, which are an extension of the Laurentian Hills north of Montreal and Ottawa and not (as commonly thought) part of the Appalachians.
@@yodorob Yes. The Monteregian Hills are a pretty cool feature. They were originally thought to be part of the same geologic event that created the Adirondacks until more investigation and the understanding of volcanic hot spots and plate tectonics. Either the hot spot has moved or gone dormant or is lying beneath the Canadian Shield somewhere building pressure and slowly creeping through the surface. Perhaps it moved a bit south and that is the large hot spot that was recently detected beneath New Hampshire that is predicted to reach the surface in a million years. Possibly as a Supervolcano.
Love this topic and refer it frequently as I am a tour guide in southeast Alaska and the subject of the local geology, particularly in regards to catastrophe, is a sure fire bet to generate a fair bit of interest since the area in which I guide is very mountainous and adjacent to the longest fjord in North America and the Juneau Ice Fields, here in Skagway. C'mon up and see us sometime.
The graphics used to explain the process of this rockfall and resulting tsunami are excellent. I'd heard of this landslide/tsunami, but I didn't know about the fracturing of the ground under the rockfall and the subsequent slide of the glacial sediment into the bay. Yep, it would definitely be best to skip any boating on this bay! Thanks for another excellent video.
A very good description with details that are sometimes missed out of other tellings of then event (e.g. other tsunamis that occurred at this location).
WOW!! The force of that landslide was amazing! And just think how comparatively common landslides are vs. tsunami producing earthquakes. Thanks for your informative video. In 1964, I lived near Crescent City, CA (20 miles from Oregon border). We woke up on Saturday to hear news of the Good Friday earthquake in Alaska and the resultant tsunami which struck the west coast -especially CC. The Crescent City harbor had a jetty to shelter the harbor on the shallow crescent shaped bay. In 1955, CC was the first port in the western hemisphere to use tetrapods to reinforce its jetty. One of the 25-ton reinforced concrete tetrapods was put display on a concrete base near the harbor shoreline. The tsunami generated by the 1964 earthquake in Alaska was sufficient to move this tetrapod a few feet on its base. Because the tetrapods were eventually being broken apart by the power of the ocean, the jetty was further reinforced in 1974 with 42-ton reinforced concrete dolos. There is one on display near the displayed tetrapod.
Whoah amazing video, extremely well explained, super easy to understand. Thank you, I can't imagine the time it must've taken to put this together. Cheers!
Could you do a video about the massive land slide that formed the eastern side of the island of Oahu in Hawaii? I hear it may have been one of the largest land slides ever on the planet.
YES!!! The Nuuanu Slide! My all time favorite geological event and an incredibly obscure and elusive one, despite it being THE largest known landslide in history. Pieces like the Tuscaloosa Seamount, the size of Manhattan island, rolled as far as 200km away across the ocean floor!! That absolutely boggles the mind. The best part is you can easily see all of it still lying on the sea floor today from a Google satellite map, it looks similar to the way wet snow scatters after kicking a snowbank.. It was 1.5My ago. A similar event occurred forming the north face of Molokai too, it’s debris path actually intersects the Oahu one. It’s the reason why Molokai’s north face has the world’s steepest sheer cliffs at 1700’! HISTORY Channel’s absolutely spectacular full length video on the Hawai’ian Islands in their series “How the Earth Was Made” is available on their TH-cam page and it spends maybe 3-4 minutes covering this.
The actual wave wasn't that tall, it was just the initial splash/runup. The actual wave was around 300 feet tall and was only about 50 feet when it hit the boats near the mouth of the bay.
It's always the most picturesque places on this planet that have a hidden monster behind it. As a child I always thought the Yellowstone area was one of the most beautiful mountain areas in the U.S. until I found out it was the worlds largest super volcano. The most pristine beaches on this planet are formed by the most violent storms...etc..
It's a great disaster movie scenario but Yellowstone is not going off anytime soon. Most of its magma is not liquid enough or under enough trapped pressure to provide the right conditions. That's my completely amateur understanding anyway.
The Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex actually produced many massive explosive eruptions, with 3 being VEI 8. The most notable of these is La Pacana. Please search on it.
While the tsunami in Valdez didn’t quite reach the height of a mega-tsunami, the 1964 Good Friday earthquake generated a tsunami in Valdez, AK that reached heights of up to 50 meters, and ranged for more than 3 KM inland. It killed several hundred people, and almost completely destroyed the town. In fact it was so bad, and due to the shape of the fjord Valdez is built in, the town ended up being moved almost 5 miles around the side of the fjord to a safer location where adjacent valleys, and several intervening outcroppings of rock can shield it from a direct hit from a tsunami. It was caused by an enormous section of the sun-ocean continental shelf breaking off and collapsing during the earthquake which resulted in the water effectively being sucked out of the fjord at first, then rushing back in.
My younger brother and I were at a summer camp outside of Juneau that evening in 1958. He was 11 and I was 13. In the girl's tent, we thought the boys were outside shaking the tent which was on a wooden platform, but after we heard nobody outside, we unzipped the door and looked out. The 200+ foot tall hemlock and spruce were whipping in the air like wheat in the wind. We thought it was cool. My mother back in Sitka said the furniture bounced across the room. Meanwhile, a Sitka fisherman and his son were bedding down for the evening in Lituya Bay in their fishing boat. They managed to get the anchor up and were carried along with the wave. Howard, the father, said they could look down into the water and see the tops of trees that grew on an island in the bay. The unfortunate people camping on that island were not so lucky. We are used to being shaken up now and then, but sometimes these quakes are deadly. The saving grace was that this one was in an isolated location. Not so much so during the Good Friday quake that hit Southcentral Alaska in 1964. Because there are not too many good bays for boats along that part of the Gulf of Alaska, boats still do use it to pull into during a storm. Your odds are better for a small fishing boat in the bay than in the open water of the gulf.
Another megatsunami caused by a huge landslide was the Vajont Dam disaster in 1963. 50 million cubic metres of water overtopped the dam, one of the tallest in the world, in a 250 m high wave, destroying Longarone and other villages, killing 2000 people, about half of them were never found.
When you wander halfway around the globe during a discussion, you might want to mention that you're not quite talking about what everyone else is. Vajont Dam = northern Italy.
@@asc_missions3080 Thank you for your answer, but it would have been nice if you said something about the man made Vajont Dam disaster compared to Lituya Bay tsunami. Both were megatsunamis caused by huge landslides, but the Vajont Dam, the highest dam in the worls back then, was built despite all warning signs. The locals protested because they knew that Monte Toc was not stable, and a smaller tsunami happened at the nearby Pontesei Dam just a few years earlier. When it was clear that Monte Toc will collapse the water level was lowered, but not enough because they underestimated the size of the landslide.
@@mario27171 Why would I criticize you for diverting the subject and then join you in doing it? Anyway, I see that you've seized upon my comment as an opening to keep at it, so that now you are escalating into trying to completely change the subject. That's bad internet etiquette. You get NO help from me.
I only recently heard about this incredible event, and of the boaters that were in the bay at that time and whom encountered that wave! Soley due to the remoteness of where this took place, and the absence of people, the injuries and damage was very limited.
Could you do a video on the 2011 Virginia Earthquake? This is one of two earthquakes I've ever felt (the other being a lower-magnitude earthquake in Delaware) and the only one I've ever felt strongly. My family was at the beach in NJ at the time. I was playing in some sand right along the shore and when the shaking started I thought it was just heat-related confusion since I had never felt an earthquake before. My family members sitting on our beach chairs got rocked back and forth a bunch but the ones swimming or wading in the ocean at the time felt nothing. I'd love to see a video on this earthquake and the east coast's geology that let me feel a magnitude 6 earthquake so strongly nearly 200 miles from the epicenter.
Look at channel “Deep Dives” they did a 30 min video something like “Why East Coast Earthquakes Are The Most Devastating”, along those lines. Search “deep dive east coast earthquakes”
What's really crazy is another earthquake that was also felt in the NY/NJ area. But it was not from 200 miles away in Virginia... but rather nearly 900 miles away in Missouri and Arkansas. If/when NMSZ goes again, Memphis and St. Louis are in serious trouble.
Wow, I thought only things happening now would be relevant, but you quickly changed my mind with this video. Great content and valuable information in this one......I mean......WOW.
I thought the definition of "megatsunami" was the landslide mechanism, to separate it from a tsunami caused by a megathrust earthquake. I've also heard it used to refer to impact and volcanic explosion tsunamis too, so I don't know.
Is one of these (perhaps the second one mentioned that occurred in another bay) the tsunami that caused a small boat with a father and son on it to be lifted and pushed above the tree line? I’ve seen an interview with the man who was the boy with his dad back then, and it is an amazing story!
On the east coast of the U.K. we nave a stretch of water known as the Dogger Bank which is well known to fishing boats but by all accounts this was a piece of land the size of a lot of countries they named Dogger Land and this was wiped out a few thousand years ago by a sunami
Also note that there is a recent paper about the 2020 Elliot Lake landslide and tsunami with a 100m runup. DOI:10.1029/2021GL096716 "The 28 November 2020 Landslide, Tsunami, and Outburst Flood - A Hazard Cascade Associated With Rapid Deglaciation at Elliot Creek, British Columbia, Canada"
Can vouch for the erosion in the Tweed Valley. Very obvious after at least two big "rain events" this year, where to my mind the first hugely softened the riverbanks and thus the second was able to sweep tall gum trees and lots of mud and soil down the river. Drove up that valley last week and the landscape was very different from just a few months ago. A series of muddy, round lagoon type areas have formed next to the river, where I guess large volumes of water and debris ate away at the banks and scoured them hard with tall trees crashing and sweeping along the narrow valley. Along the valley's top 50km or so, there were at least four temporary traffic lights, where the road has collapsed into the river, cutting the road to one lane. Elsewhere, entire road sections just disintegrated so you drive over 100m or so of rubble and no tar paving is left at all due to water that flowed over it during the deluges. We seem to be in a long-lasting La Niña phase that has now spanned two or three years. There's a 2km or so elevated section along the very top of the valley, a bit away from the river, where you can see right along and past the ancient volcano core, the distinctive Wollumbin (Mt Warning). Parts of the road there have just slipped down the escarpment. So even though it's a very old and very dead volcano, it's still a dynamic landscape with geologic forces and changes literally visible over the course of a few months!
Several fishing boats were in the bay when this tsunami happened. The wave lifted the boats over the spit of land at the entrance and deposited them out into the deeper water. The guys on the boats survived.
Next video idea: I got to visit Pompeii when I was in high school many years ago. I was always interested in why some people were not able to escape and perished. What are your thoughts on how many people escaped and how many met their end? Were there warnings? Can we learn from this? Love the channel!!
The story on that is actually pretty mundane. Long story short, the people with means fled as there were tremors and earthquakes that made people leave 2-4 days prior to the volcano erupting. Themost people who died were poor people and slaves and other people too stubborn to leave or did not have the means to leave.
I think another aspect of Pompei was that the people were used to there being some volcanic activity such as ash and tremors. This caused a lot of complacency in the population as a whole. Those that left early were indeed wealthy but many of those left not from fear but more from the inconvenience the ash, the tremors, etc were causing to their daily lives.
@@Isabella-nh5dm All n all, 2k deaths out of 20k people living isn't too shabby for a evacuation in all honesty for the time. Roman civics weren't too shabby even by today standards. I've seen worse in the modern day.
I remember seeing a show on TV about this mega-tsunami. Two people visited the bay just before this happened, and were curious about how odd the forest was, with the trees several hundred feet up from the water being uniformly shorter. When the mega-tsunami happened, the person who heard the news had a Eureka! moment, and called up his friend with the news.
Yeah I remember the History Channel playing something about this back in the day I forget what the actual show was called though but I've heard of this mega-tsunami before.
No the the wave was not 524m. it sloshed up the opposing sides of the canyon 524m. The wave as it crosses from one side to the other is much much much shorter. The wave and the slosh height are different
It's called the runup height, and it's the result of waves stacking on top of one another, much the way mountains do. Mt. Everest has its roots at over 10,000 feet, yet you wouldn't claim the peak is not actually 29,000 feet high. Also, a slosh wave is a seich, not a tsunami.
Great info for someone in the high remote Himalayas on the most what's called 'the most dangerous road in the world.' The entire Himalayan regions could go like this - anytime!!!
My wife and I camped on Cenotaph Island in 1994 after rafting the Tat river. The entrance to the bay was terrifying, the tree line was shocking and that night both me and my wife had dreams warning us to "get out while you still can". On the island is a plaque placed by the Harvard Mountaineering Club thanking a local trapper for his help when they climbed Mt Fairweather. The real cenotaph was left by the La Perouse expedition in honor of the 21 sailors lost when surveying the entrance channel. It is that dangerous.
I took a cruise in 06 and seen where a landslide happened in Tracy Arm fjord. If I’m spelling that correctly. And it generated a giant tsunami. It was amazing
Could you you do a thing on the Big Lava Field, NE of Carson WA? There's cool ice caves and lakes that drain in the spring and such and, who knows, maybe DB Cooper is there.
“I would not recommend visiting the area” sounds like staying away from most of the AK coast. That’s a little bit like keeping away from all trees because a branch could fall and hit your head. There are risks in staying in your home too.
Lake Tahoe experienced a very large t sf unsmi when there was a major landslide. Some of the biggest Megatsuasmis of recent geologic times probably occurred when flank collapses occured in the Hawaiian Islands. A flank collapse of the island of Hawaii is perhaps the largest probable natural disaster looming in the future outside of an impact event. When Oahu suffered a flank collapse a large enough piece came off of the island that it was initially thought to be a seamount.
If memory serves me right, I believe a father and son were fishing somewhere in those waters. Can you imagine, “hey dad, what the heck is that?”AAAAAAAAAH!!! I also believe they survived.
What would happen to the Alberni canal on Vancouver island should a large 9.0 Cascadia earthquake and tsunami occur? Thank you for sharing your great research.
Enjoy expanding my horizons with this channel. You're keeping me interested. SUGGESTION: What's new in the Marianas Trech. Anything like plate tectonics or uplift, emerging underwater fumerals and the like. ☺️
Request: When you look at a satellite map of eastern USA, there is a distinct striped pattern running northeast - southwest from perhaps Pennsylvania to North Carolina, and I’ve even observed it and photographed it from an airliner, but I’ve never heard anybody describe what it is. I’m really shocked because it seems like such an obvious geological phenomenon and I’ve learned a million other things and yet never once heard any reference to this.
Excuse my ignorance if this is not related - but is it the "fall line"? I just heard about this the other day and can't believe I didn't know of it earlier.
Dear sir, Do you think we now have enough information about the earth's landscape/geology to be able to come up with a plan to help migrate people towards safe ground that can also be self-sustaining either for that region or for trade?
Lituya Bay has been the site of frequent large volume landslides and tsunamis during the last 1,000 years. What makes this hazard most worrying is how similar other sections of the Alaskan coastline look to this bay, meaning that a similar landslide + tsunami could also occur there.
Wasn't there a guy who road that Tsunami out in a canoe?
if it's unstable enough all it would take would be a small Tremor to trigger one.
@lazarman121 no it’s was a very large fishing boat.
As an Alaskan that is a scary thought
Once again I must send my compliments to you for providing such educational videos. I am always impressed by your topics and the way you explain it. Love your channel. 💕
Glad you covered this amazing Lituya Bay event, and we can thank geologist Don Miller for his early investigations and images. His original 1960 paper is linked in one of your citations: Don J. Miller (1960), "Giant Waves at Lituya Bay, Alaska"
Chat GPT sent me on a crazy adventure and it talked about Lituya Bay Tsunami and I had to learn more.
This video was very well done and I really enjoyed it!
Thanks and keep it up 👍
Thank you very much for this video. I heard about the incident before but have never seen good graphics or a well worked out scientific description.
Never underestimate what large masses can do when they are moving ...
When you can meaningfully measure volume in cubic kilometers you know you're dealing with something scary!
a wall of water carrying crush depth pressures inside it
We anchored in that bay in 1998. The captain handed me a book about the disaster. Beautiful place, but not somewhere you'd want to be all the time.
Why not, mosquitoes?
@@tryscience Yes, they were bad. And the book about the disaster made it feel unnerving. Plus, the entrance to the bay through the sand spits is dodgy. There are a few wrecks there.
@@JustinQuilling sounds like an interesting experience just the same. I appreciate your reply.
One of my favorite geology stories. That mountain getting scalped is insane!!!
I have a video here somewhere of me on a Coast Guard ship in this bay. Anchored by the island in the middle. This was 1995 and the tree line from the wave was still super obvious even then. Had a grizzly walk out when we were there as well.
"Hello, friend! Let me tell you how I survived a freaky monstrous wave when I was young...." - grizzly, probably
Can't imagine how many animals that tsunami took out back then
There is an extinct volcano Off the coast of Africa that's ready to slide into the Atlantic Ocean generating a mega tsunami 1000 feet plus expected to hit the coast of Florida the rest will be history
Thanks for this. I read about the Lituya Bay event when researching for a kayak trip to Icy Bay back in the 1990s. It’s interesting to see discussions pop up in video.
I recall a recent expedition into the bay following what I thought was another recent large slide, though I don’t recall the specifics.
Interesting to hear of the Taan Fjord slide. I know the glaciers have receded considerably since I was there, but I was still struck at the time by the raw and recently uncovered land from the already vastly receded glaciers. I suspect the site of the recent Taan slide/tsunami was not directly adjacent to water when I was there, but as your Lituya discussion demonstrates, it may well have calved a large portion of the glacier had it occurred ~25 years ago.
Wow, this was a very very clear explanation of what happened...great graphics that were easy to understand. Superlative job.
Let's not forgot that the last time a mega tsunami hit the planet was...in October 17, 2015 in Alaska...and it made absolutely no news anywhere even though it was the 4th largest ever recorded on earth.
Correction: Another one hit Greenland in 2017, admittedly that was 6th largest, still interior to the 2015 disaster.
I looked it up. 193m!
Wow! Thanks for paying attention and relating this information. Very nice of you and caring! As some of us with inquiring minds do need to know. Blessings!
I would love to see a video on this event.
This was really well presented and very well explained. Thank you.
Hazards like what happened in the Alaskan fjord also can happen in Norway. In fact any where fjords exist.
They're so beautiful though. There's always a catch with the beauty of mother nature.
Can they happen in a chjevy?
Or just fjords?
I’ve heard about this mega-tsunami before, but I’ve never heard such a clear explanation for it until now. Thanks for making this video!
Been there. It's an amazing place.
One thing you didn't mention - there were fishing boats in the bay for the 1958 incident. One actually survived. It did 360's out over the bar!!
There are two peaks on the island that's out in the middle. The wave jumped the ridge between them on its way out.
The bay is still regularly used by fishing vessels escaping the weather. Between there and Cross Sound, there's no place to hide.
Side stripe shrimp as big as prawns off the west end of the island. Delicious.
You're right about it being an amazing place. We called it the eighth wonder of the world. And the first thing we did once we got there was to throw out a shrimp pot. Although what we brought up were mostly cocktail shrimp, with maybe 4 or 5 prawns. Maybe you used better bait. We just used a can of cat food.
@@orangemaleoscar2651 I was there in the mid-seventies. If I remember correctly, we dropped the pot just off of the west end of the island. The cliff there goes almost straight down, at least 20 fathoms.
There's a lot of game in the area too. Must have been a couple of dozen goats way up the exposed rock on the SE side of the bay. Saw a couple of moose over by the old cabin. Bear tracks everywhere.
I climbed to one of the peaks on the island. The moss was so deep and spongy you could have belly flopped on it. You almost expect to see fairies and leprechauns.
@@scottryals3191 I was there in 1981. And boy do I remember the bear tracks. Especially when I was on shore picking huckleberries. I never saw a bear, although somebody told us they saw one swimming towards the island.
Did you ever fill your fresh water tank from the little waterfall that spilled into the bay from what I assume was glacial runoff? At the time I was leery of drinking it. But now I realize it was probably some of the healthiest water on the planet.
I wonder what the glaciers look like now.
I remember as a young boy at school being absolutely fascinated by this event. I would go to the school library and read about it. As a lifelong surfer I could never get the wave height of 1700 feet out of my head.
The wave wasn't that high, rather, the momentum of the water pushed it that far up the hill. Sloshing is a correct way of looking at it, as the kinetic energy in the water is converted to potential energy at the barrier as it is countered by gravity. The potential energy then returns to kinetic as it moves back across or down the bay The wave in the bay may have only been 100 ft high or so. Along the west coast, a 1ft actual tsunami wave at the coast will often rise to 5 or 6 ft up river as the "volume" of water is compressed into a narrow channel through a funneling action. The damage of a wave is a function of volume, velocity, time, and barrier constraints.
@@robertslugg8361 yes its very interesting how energy distributes itself. There is footage on YT the day after the Japan tsunami in 2011 a small pulse wave entering a canal behind houses in Hawaii and it's only about a foot high but it just proceeds to make its way along, incredible. I think the canal is the one near Kailua on Oahu as Ive been there a few times, may not be, but looked familiar.
Wow never heard of this before, I can't even imagine the scale of such a wave. Kind of makes me hope another one happens soon and someone can get it on video (so long as no one gets hurt lol).
I've seen a video on this before, but wow does this video really show it well! You do a great job with the drawings
Wow what an amazing video. My only complaint is that it wasn't longer. But you bet I'm gonna binge watch as many of these as I can now. Also if you haven't already done one, I'd love to see a video about the geological history of the Great Lakes and/or the Niagara Escarpment, which the Niagara Falls go over. As I understand it, the area around the tip of the Bruce Peninsula near Tobermory in Ontario also has some of the oldest rocks in the world. That might make an interesting video as well.
I find the geology of the area around the north-eastern US to be pretty interesting. Could you do a topic on the Adirondacks and how they came to be, having heard that they formed recently geologically. Also Quebec has the Monteregian Hills which are also neat in regards to how they formed.
The Adirondacks are part of some of the most ancient mountain ranges in the world. Created before the Atlantic Ocean was born. I believe the highlands of Scotland were part of the same formation. I believe it was around 250,000,000 years ago.
I think they're old and once looked like the Rockies. I even bet they came to be before the continents were in their current locations.
@E Van Yes! The Appalachian and Adirondacks possibly rivaled the Himalayas of today.
Mount Royal in the heart of my own Montreal (and that's indeed how Montreal derives its name) is one of the Monteregian Hills, and the others are all not so far away. They are a chain of very ancient (and thankfully extinct) volcanoes that extends from the ocean near Bermuda through New Hampshire and on to northeast Ontario. As such, they are of a different origin from the Adirondacks, which are an extension of the Laurentian Hills north of Montreal and Ottawa and not (as commonly thought) part of the Appalachians.
@@yodorob Yes. The Monteregian Hills are a pretty cool feature. They were originally thought to be part of the same geologic event that created the Adirondacks until more investigation and the understanding of volcanic hot spots and plate tectonics. Either the hot spot has moved or gone dormant or is lying beneath the Canadian Shield somewhere building pressure and slowly creeping through the surface. Perhaps it moved a bit south and that is the large hot spot that was recently detected beneath New Hampshire that is predicted to reach the surface in a million years. Possibly as a Supervolcano.
Story time! I had a random video recommended to me about The Lituya Bay tsunami. A recommended video on that one led me to your channel haha
Thank you for this video. I've read about this event before but your visuals really helped to illustrate how the event played out.
Thanks for this talk on Lituya Bay. I first read about this inlet tsunami in the 80's and found it very interesting.
Love this topic and refer it frequently as I am a tour guide in southeast Alaska and the subject of the local geology, particularly in regards to catastrophe, is a sure fire bet to generate a fair bit of interest since the area in which I guide is very mountainous and adjacent to the longest fjord in North America and the Juneau Ice Fields, here in Skagway. C'mon up and see us sometime.
Great information !
Can you talk about the potential for the same to occur near Prince Rupert BC and Kitimat
The graphics used to explain the process of this rockfall and resulting tsunami are excellent. I'd heard of this landslide/tsunami, but I didn't know about the fracturing of the ground under the rockfall and the subsequent slide of the glacial sediment into the bay. Yep, it would definitely be best to skip any boating on this bay! Thanks for another excellent video.
A very good description with details that are sometimes missed out of other tellings of then event (e.g. other tsunamis that occurred at this location).
do you think you could do more videos on really ancient asteroid craters? like billion+ years old
WOW!! The force of that landslide was amazing! And just think how comparatively common landslides are vs. tsunami producing earthquakes.
Thanks for your informative video.
In 1964, I lived near Crescent City, CA (20 miles from Oregon border). We woke up on Saturday to hear news of the Good Friday earthquake in Alaska and the resultant tsunami which struck the west coast -especially CC.
The Crescent City harbor had a jetty to shelter the harbor on the shallow crescent shaped bay. In 1955, CC was the first port in the western hemisphere to use tetrapods to reinforce its jetty. One of the 25-ton reinforced concrete tetrapods was put display on a concrete base near the harbor shoreline. The tsunami generated by the 1964 earthquake in Alaska was sufficient to move this tetrapod a few feet on its base.
Because the tetrapods were eventually being broken apart by the power of the ocean, the jetty was further reinforced in 1974 with 42-ton reinforced concrete dolos. There is one on display near the displayed tetrapod.
Whoah amazing video, extremely well explained, super easy to understand. Thank you, I can't imagine the time it must've taken to put this together. Cheers!
Could you do a video about the massive land slide that formed the eastern side of the island of Oahu in Hawaii? I hear it may have been one of the largest land slides ever on the planet.
YES!!! The Nuuanu Slide! My all time favorite geological event and an incredibly obscure and elusive one, despite it being THE largest known landslide in history. Pieces like the Tuscaloosa Seamount, the size of Manhattan island, rolled as far as 200km away across the ocean floor!! That absolutely boggles the mind. The best part is you can easily see all of it still lying on the sea floor today from a Google satellite map, it looks similar to the way wet snow scatters after kicking a snowbank.. It was 1.5My ago. A similar event occurred forming the north face of Molokai too, it’s debris path actually intersects the Oahu one. It’s the reason why Molokai’s north face has the world’s steepest sheer cliffs at 1700’!
HISTORY Channel’s absolutely spectacular full length video on the Hawai’ian Islands in their series “How the Earth Was Made” is available on their TH-cam page and it spends maybe 3-4 minutes covering this.
What about the Hilina Slump! That’s ready to go at anytime. ❤️🙏❤️
The actual wave wasn't that tall, it was just the initial splash/runup. The actual wave was around 300 feet tall and was only about 50 feet when it hit the boats near the mouth of the bay.
That still had to have sucked...but at the same time been awesome
That was beautiful. Would you consider doing more videos like these?
All I can say is , WOW !
Geology is so awesome 🥰
I watched a show about this. Imagine the shear terror of seeing this in person. 😬😬😬
Wow. Amazing detail! Excellent post.
It's always the most picturesque places on this planet that have a hidden monster behind it. As a child I always thought the Yellowstone area was one of the most beautiful mountain areas in the U.S. until I found out it was the worlds largest super volcano. The most pristine beaches on this planet are formed by the most violent storms...etc..
Same can be said of Oregon's Crater Lake, phenomenal landscape especially late at night and yet it's still an active volcano.
Yellowstone is not the largest supervolcano, there's at least 3 or 4 above it, and that's a lot since supervolcanos are very rare.
@@sjwarialaw8155 Altiplano puna magma complex would be considered the largest right?
It's a great disaster movie scenario but Yellowstone is not going off anytime soon. Most of its magma is not liquid enough or under enough trapped pressure to provide the right conditions.
That's my completely amateur understanding anyway.
The Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex actually produced many massive explosive eruptions, with 3 being VEI 8. The most notable of these is La Pacana. Please search on it.
On a clear day flying from Seattle to Anchorage you can spot this bay if you know where to look.
Fascinating report. Thank you. I enjoyed learning about this area in Alaska.
While the tsunami in Valdez didn’t quite reach the height of a mega-tsunami, the 1964 Good Friday earthquake generated a tsunami in Valdez, AK that reached heights of up to 50 meters, and ranged for more than 3 KM inland. It killed several hundred people, and almost completely destroyed the town. In fact it was so bad, and due to the shape of the fjord Valdez is built in, the town ended up being moved almost 5 miles around the side of the fjord to a safer location where adjacent valleys, and several intervening outcroppings of rock can shield it from a direct hit from a tsunami. It was caused by an enormous section of the sun-ocean continental shelf breaking off and collapsing during the earthquake which resulted in the water effectively being sucked out of the fjord at first, then rushing back in.
There's video of that happening off Anchorage during the 1964 earthquake, taken by a sailor on board a ship that was pulled toward the sinking water.
My younger brother and I were at a summer camp outside of Juneau that evening in 1958. He was 11 and I was 13. In the girl's tent, we thought the boys were outside shaking the tent which was on a wooden platform, but after we heard nobody outside, we unzipped the door and looked out. The 200+ foot tall hemlock and spruce were whipping in the air like wheat in the wind. We thought it was cool.
My mother back in Sitka said the furniture bounced across the room. Meanwhile, a Sitka fisherman and his son were bedding down for the evening in Lituya Bay in their fishing boat. They managed to get the anchor up and were carried along with the wave. Howard, the father, said they could look down into the water and see the tops of trees that grew on an island in the bay. The unfortunate people camping on that island were not so lucky.
We are used to being shaken up now and then, but sometimes these quakes are deadly. The saving grace was that this one was in an isolated location. Not so much so during the Good Friday quake that hit Southcentral Alaska in 1964.
Because there are not too many good bays for boats along that part of the Gulf of Alaska, boats still do use it to pull into during a storm. Your odds are better for a small fishing boat in the bay than in the open water of the gulf.
Very insightful, Great video 🌊
Another megatsunami caused by a huge landslide was the Vajont Dam disaster in 1963.
50 million cubic metres of water overtopped the dam, one of the tallest in the world, in a 250 m high wave, destroying Longarone and other villages, killing 2000 people, about half of them were never found.
When you wander halfway around the globe during a discussion, you might want to mention that you're not quite talking about what everyone else is. Vajont Dam = northern Italy.
@@asc_missions3080 Thank you for your answer, but it would have been nice if you said something about the man made Vajont Dam disaster compared to Lituya Bay tsunami.
Both were megatsunamis caused by huge landslides, but the Vajont Dam, the highest dam in the worls back then, was built despite all warning signs. The locals protested because they knew that Monte Toc was not stable, and a smaller tsunami happened at the nearby Pontesei Dam just a few years earlier.
When it was clear that Monte Toc will collapse the water level was lowered, but not enough because they underestimated the size of the landslide.
@@mario27171 Why would I criticize you for diverting the subject and then join you in doing it? Anyway, I see that you've seized upon my comment as an opening to keep at it, so that now you are escalating into trying to completely change the subject. That's bad internet etiquette. You get NO help from me.
@@asc_missions3080 Ok, you are right, and I have my peace.
WOW that was insanely powerful. Thanks for sharing!
Fascinating, good thing its remote, it would have been devastating if a population of people were living there
Did you see that there was a large landslide this week inside Rocky Mountain National Park in/near Chaos Canyon?
I only recently heard about this incredible event, and of the boaters that were in the bay at that time and whom encountered that wave!
Soley due to the remoteness of where this took place, and the absence of people, the injuries and damage was very limited.
I've heard about this before. But you've explained in much better with greater visuals.
Thank you. Very interesting.
Could you do a video on the 2011 Virginia Earthquake? This is one of two earthquakes I've ever felt (the other being a lower-magnitude earthquake in Delaware) and the only one I've ever felt strongly. My family was at the beach in NJ at the time. I was playing in some sand right along the shore and when the shaking started I thought it was just heat-related confusion since I had never felt an earthquake before. My family members sitting on our beach chairs got rocked back and forth a bunch but the ones swimming or wading in the ocean at the time felt nothing. I'd love to see a video on this earthquake and the east coast's geology that let me feel a magnitude 6 earthquake so strongly nearly 200 miles from the epicenter.
Look at channel “Deep Dives” they did a 30 min video something like “Why East Coast Earthquakes Are The Most Devastating”, along those lines. Search “deep dive east coast earthquakes”
What's really crazy is another earthquake that was also felt in the NY/NJ area. But it was not from 200 miles away in Virginia... but rather nearly 900 miles away in Missouri and Arkansas. If/when NMSZ goes again, Memphis and St. Louis are in serious trouble.
Wow, I thought only things happening now would be relevant, but you quickly changed my mind with this video. Great content and valuable information in this one......I mean......WOW.
I thought the definition of "megatsunami" was the landslide mechanism, to separate it from a tsunami caused by a megathrust earthquake. I've also heard it used to refer to impact and volcanic explosion tsunamis too, so I don't know.
Is one of these (perhaps the second one mentioned that occurred in another bay) the tsunami that caused a small boat with a father and son on it to be lifted and pushed above the tree line? I’ve seen an interview with the man who was the boy with his dad back then, and it is an amazing story!
A great channel, thanks so much.
On the east coast of the U.K. we nave a stretch of water known as the Dogger Bank which is well known to fishing boats but by all accounts this was a piece of land the size of a lot of countries they named Dogger Land and this was wiped out a few thousand years ago by a sunami
Great content as always! Much thanks.
Can you explain the Wilpena Pound in South Australia? Please
Also note that there is a recent paper about the 2020 Elliot Lake landslide and tsunami with a 100m runup. DOI:10.1029/2021GL096716 "The 28 November 2020 Landslide, Tsunami, and Outburst Flood - A Hazard Cascade Associated With Rapid Deglaciation at Elliot Creek, British Columbia, Canada"
The lines and arrows really add to the explanation.
great video
I would like to suggest a topic for a future video, the Nuuanu landslide in Oahu.
There is an eyewitness report of a father and son fishing the bay when it hit telling how the rode the wave over trees
Hi, Could you make a video about that massive eroded volcano/caldera in NSW Australia called the Tweed volcano?
Can vouch for the erosion in the Tweed Valley. Very obvious after at least two big "rain events" this year, where to my mind the first hugely softened the riverbanks and thus the second was able to sweep tall gum trees and lots of mud and soil down the river.
Drove up that valley last week and the landscape was very different from just a few months ago. A series of muddy, round lagoon type areas have formed next to the river, where I guess large volumes of water and debris ate away at the banks and scoured them hard with tall trees crashing and sweeping along the narrow valley.
Along the valley's top 50km or so, there were at least four temporary traffic lights, where the road has collapsed into the river, cutting the road to one lane. Elsewhere, entire road sections just disintegrated so you drive over 100m or so of rubble and no tar paving is left at all due to water that flowed over it during the deluges. We seem to be in a long-lasting La Niña phase that has now spanned two or three years. There's a 2km or so elevated section along the very top of the valley, a bit away from the river, where you can see right along and past the ancient volcano core, the distinctive Wollumbin (Mt Warning). Parts of the road there have just slipped down the escarpment.
So even though it's a very old and very dead volcano, it's still a dynamic landscape with geologic forces and changes literally visible over the course of a few months!
I'm glad you're using metric.
Well Done... LIKED, SUBSCRIBED, & DING!!!
Several fishing boats were in the bay when this tsunami happened. The wave lifted the boats over the spit of land at the entrance and deposited them out into the deeper water. The guys on the boats survived.
Do they keep cameras here for scientific observation? Would be great to have footage of the next one
Next video idea: I got to visit Pompeii when I was in high school many years ago. I was always interested in why some people were not able to escape and perished. What are your thoughts on how many people escaped and how many met their end? Were there warnings? Can we learn from this? Love the channel!!
The story on that is actually pretty mundane.
Long story short, the people with means fled as there were tremors and earthquakes that made people leave 2-4 days prior to the volcano erupting. Themost people who died were poor people and slaves and other people too stubborn to leave or did not have the means to leave.
Pompeii had become like Sodom & Gamorra. New finding are showing they were almost as decitant as America has become in the last year alone.
if you can see a volcanoe you are too close
I think another aspect of Pompei was that the people were used to there being some volcanic activity such as ash and tremors. This caused a lot of complacency in the population as a whole. Those that left early were indeed wealthy but many of those left not from fear but more from the inconvenience the ash, the tremors, etc were causing to their daily lives.
@@Isabella-nh5dm All n all, 2k deaths out of 20k people living isn't too shabby for a evacuation in all honesty for the time. Roman civics weren't too shabby even by today standards. I've seen worse in the modern day.
I remember seeing a show on TV about this mega-tsunami. Two people visited the bay just before this happened, and were curious about how odd the forest was, with the trees several hundred feet up from the water being uniformly shorter. When the mega-tsunami happened, the person who heard the news had a Eureka! moment, and called up his friend with the news.
Yeah I remember the History Channel playing something about this back in the day I forget what the actual show was called though but I've heard of this mega-tsunami before.
No the the wave was not 524m. it sloshed up the opposing sides of the canyon 524m. The wave as it crosses from one side to the other is much much much shorter.
The wave and the slosh height are different
It's called the runup height, and it's the result of waves stacking on top of one another, much the way mountains do. Mt. Everest has its roots at over 10,000 feet, yet you wouldn't claim the peak is not actually 29,000 feet high.
Also, a slosh wave is a seich, not a tsunami.
@@AtarahDerek a seiche, tho great vocab, is not what we are talking about.
@@TheJttv Sloshing because the water got shaken = seiche
Big ripples caused by something big falling in the water = tsunami
Its roots are actually very deep in the Earth’s crust.
Great info for someone in the high remote Himalayas on the most what's called 'the most dangerous road in the world.' The entire Himalayan regions could go like this - anytime!!!
My wife and I camped on Cenotaph Island in 1994 after rafting the Tat river. The entrance to the bay was terrifying, the tree line was shocking and that night both me and my wife had dreams warning us to "get out while you still can". On the island is a plaque placed by the Harvard Mountaineering Club thanking a local trapper for his help when they climbed Mt Fairweather. The real cenotaph was left by the La Perouse expedition in honor of the 21 sailors lost when surveying the entrance channel. It is that dangerous.
Can there be a video about? The Alaska 2002 7.9 earthquake on the Denali fault.
Wow that is amazing Thank you
I took a cruise in 06 and seen where a landslide happened in Tracy Arm fjord. If I’m spelling that correctly. And it generated a giant tsunami. It was amazing
Could you you do a thing on the Big Lava Field, NE of Carson WA? There's cool ice caves and lakes that drain in the spring and such and, who knows, maybe DB Cooper is there.
“I would not recommend visiting the area” sounds like staying away from most of the AK coast. That’s a little bit like keeping away from all trees because a branch could fall and hit your head. There are risks in staying in your home too.
Lake Tahoe experienced a very large t sf unsmi when there was a major landslide. Some of the biggest Megatsuasmis of recent geologic times probably occurred when flank collapses occured in the Hawaiian Islands. A flank collapse of the island of Hawaii is perhaps the largest probable natural disaster looming in the future outside of an impact event. When Oahu suffered a flank collapse a large enough piece came off of the island that it was initially thought to be a seamount.
😲 FASCINATING‼️‼️‼️
Next video please: the geologic oddity in Tucson az, the mt lemmon hoodoos
If memory serves me right, I believe a father and son were fishing somewhere in those waters. Can you imagine, “hey dad, what the heck is that?”AAAAAAAAAH!!! I also believe they survived.
Yes, indeed. They eded up fairly far out to sea but were otherwise fine.
Very frightening! It ruined a large area of our south island in New Zealand
What did?
What would happen to the Alberni canal on Vancouver island should a large 9.0 Cascadia earthquake and tsunami occur? Thank you for sharing your great research.
Very interesting ❤️💕👵🌺
Speaking of landslide tsunamis, do a video on the potential Cumbre Vieja tsunami on La Palma in the Canary Islands.
Dude there's no way that happend. 1720 feet? It's so unbelievable bro it's insane
Thoose numbers... we cant possibly imagine such things... :0
have you ever looked into storegga landslide and tsunami?
There's footage of this happening in Asia floating around on the internet, I saw it on a compilation video
Absolutely terrifying
I read about that when I was a kid!
Hello, I live in Alaska. Therefore, I have a personal interest in this video content.
Enjoy expanding my horizons with this channel. You're keeping me interested. SUGGESTION: What's new in the Marianas Trech. Anything like plate tectonics or uplift, emerging underwater fumerals and the like. ☺️
Looks like a great location for a 24/7 webcam. Maybe call it Northern Lights with a bonus?
Educational thank you
Let's see something on Island Park Caldera. Very beautiful and in the real sense of the word Awesome.
Request: When you look at a satellite map of eastern USA, there is a distinct striped pattern running northeast - southwest from perhaps Pennsylvania to North Carolina, and I’ve even observed it and photographed it from an airliner, but I’ve never heard anybody describe what it is. I’m really shocked because it seems like such an obvious geological phenomenon and I’ve learned a million other things and yet never once heard any reference to this.
Excuse my ignorance if this is not related - but is it the "fall line"? I just heard about this the other day and can't believe I didn't know of it earlier.
Ah, the infamous Lituya bay tsunami. I would not want to be there when it was occurring !
Dear sir,
Do you think we now have enough information about the earth's landscape/geology to be able to come up with a plan to help migrate people towards safe ground that can also be self-sustaining either for that region or for trade?
That would be the scariest thing to witness... A wall of water we almost can't even comprehend existing... Yet it does...