The derecho ( tight - go banding of severe electric storm ) that clobbered the Northeast on June 13 was nothing terribly particular by National Weather Service standards ; meteorologist sort it as “ low - end . ” But the violent storm ’s aftereffects — kicking up six - foot waves in more than 30 tidal gauges along the East Coast — spur a more subtle natural phenomenon : a tsunami .
Well , maybe not just a tsunami . Paul Whitmore , director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center For Tsunami Research , explained that the wave was plausibly just a “ meteotsunami”—because of meteoric conditions , not seismic activeness . The derecho organisation that strike through the Northeast might have changed the air travel pressure just enough to “ generate wave that act like tsunamis , ” Whitmore said .
The tsunami ’s grounds is still under inspection : the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center says it could be anything from the unassailable tempest to the continental shelf due east of New Jersey slumping . Typically in tsunamis , water moves out to sea and apace rushes back in , but water speeds report in Rhode Island indicate something other than a storm billow .
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The tsunami ( for now ) wave peak at just under a foot above sea level at a tide gauge in Newport , Rhode Island , and NOAA tracked the tsunami sign from Massachussets down to North Carolina ; reports come in from as far as Puerto Rico and the Bahamas . An eyewitness report from a spear fisherman on the Jersey Shore , Brian Coen , noted an close to 6 - human foot waveexposing rock candy that were typically submerged in three or four feet of weewee .
reliable tsunamis , Japanese for “ harbor wave , ” are generated by sudden shift in the seafloor , landslides , or volcanic activity . The last important meteotsunamis to hit the East Coast pass off in 1992 in Daytona Beach , Florida and 2008 in Boothbay Harbor , Maine . There ’s difference of opinion whether an East Coast derecho at the end of June in 2012 stirred up a meteotsunami in the Chesapeake Bay — waves reportedly only reached 40 centimetre .
