“Think again. It would be 40 or 50 feet high and travel a mile inland.”
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No, there’s no way that a La Palma island landslide could displace a volume of water sufficient to do that… no where close to that.
You may be thinking of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami or the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that did so much damage. But those were tsunamis caused by undersea MEGAthrust earthquakes and were true monsters.
And if you’re thinking of the Lituya Bay tsunami, you’ve got the right kind of tsunami (landslide, water displacement) but the wrong kind of geographic situation. The Lituya Bay is a small fjord (about 2 miles wide by 7 miles long) and its tsunami was triggered by a landslide right in the fjord and the displaced water was concentrated in that narrow channel before spreading out into the ocean.
Any tsunami caused by a La Palma landslide would go into the open Atlantic ocean thousands of miles from our east coast. The initial height of that tsunami might he large but would its volume of water would rapidly widen and shrink in height.
See PIF’s excellent explanation above.
I am pining for the fjords.
“… See PIF’s excellent explanation above.”
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That is, excellent explanation of an undersea megathrust earthquake.
I accidentally deleted a long post explaining what will happen according to a professional :
See here (4.48 min)
Megatsunami Scenario - La Palma Landslide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6utAunBKXV4
The height would shrink and spread out, but it would build back up after hitting the shore. It might be one inch high but miles wide.