[GSWarrior]

That picture is a bore!

Feel free to post a more exciting picture of a tsunami surge making its way through San Francisco Bay.

; }

[Carry_Okie]

The form of the long wave in the picture as it proceeds up a channel is referred by oceanologists as a "bore." The most common cause is extreme tidal differences operating in a narrow channel. Among the tidal bores of the world, there is often one in Tomales Bay nearby, the Bay of Fundy, up the Amazon channel, etc. Tidal bores have a form very similar to what is depicted in the photo.

It was a pun son.

As to origin of the word, "tsunami," when American scientists realized that "tidal waves" had nothing to do with tides, they decided they would adopt the Japanese word, in the belief that the Japanese were more "scientific" about such things. Little did they know that the English translation for the Japanese word is... "tidal wave." The term stuck anyway and has become a huge joke among the oceanographic literati. The correct term is now, "seismic wave."