[Granville-Hough] 5 Mar 2009 - Atlantic Tsunami

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:46:02 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Atlantic Tsunami - 5 Mar 2009

Today seems to be a promising day with a slight chance of showers, which 
is the other end of the same truth that there is a very great chance of 
no showers.  Probability is one of those areas of mathematics which is 
often in conflict with popular reasoning. I can repeat an old message.

I seem to do my  most rewarding reading while waiting in some
doctor's office.  I found a discussion, as I recall, of the dangers for
tsunami generation, of the Canary Islands, or of some other volcanic
origin group in the Atlantic.  Cape Verde is further south, so it must
have been the Canaries.  One particular island is split, with one side
going down some few miles to the ocean floor.  If that island split off,
just in a square mile size fragment, and slid down to the ocean floor,
the disturbance would be such as to create a tsunami which would wipe
out all the coastal cities on the Atlantic side of America.

    So, when will it happen? In some geologic time in the future, a few
million years, a few thousand years, a few humdred years, or a few dozen
years.  No one has predicted a particular year. With absolute certainty,
it won't be 2004 or 2008.  That's all you can say.  There is some 
probability it will be in 2009.

    When I lived in Westchester, CA, in 1953-55, we were about three miles
from the beach, but on a hill overlooking the hangar in Culver City 
where Howard Hughes
stored his big plane.  One night when the beach was vacant, a wave came
in which was about three feet higher than normal waves.  It covered all
the beaches, and there was much speculation about its cause and if
anyone had been swept away by it.  No one was reported missing and after
about a week there was no more discussion.  My guess now is that there
was a local slide at the Continental shelf which caused the
disturbance.  It has always stuck in my mind that funny things happen on
beaches, and I have never been comfortable near them.

    Tonight in the report on the big conference on the tsunami, there
was again mention of a warning system, but no admirals or other 
government officials were named.  We could ask young people today about 
that most destructive tsunami of our lifetime, and few could name or 
place it geographically.  Yet tsunamis will visit us again, as a matter 
of absolute certainty.  If you like, God has willed it, and put the 
mechanism in place.  In the long run, the Atlantic Coast is a goner.