The giant wave of Icy Bay

摘要

Alandslide last fall caused a giant wave of the type not seen in Alaska since the storied 1958 event in Lituya Bay. After a period of heavy rains, a mountainside near Tyndall Glacier collapsed into a fiord of Icy Bay on Oct. 17, 2015. The displaced water generated a wave that sheared alders more than 500 feet up on a hillside across from the slide.To put that in perspective, the 2011 tsunami in Japan reached about 130 feet above sea level. The Icy Bay wave may be the largest since a magnitude 8 earthquake shook much of a mountain into Lituya Bay in 1958. The wave that followed ripped spruce from 1,700 feet up a mountain slope and left trimlines in the bay that are visible today.