Strange waves in Shishmaref baffle scientists

A series of unusual waves hit the beaches of Shishmaref last Monday, damaging a boat and a snowmachine and causing concern among residents. Early in the morning, while the water was extremely calm, a single, long wave rolled in and crashed onto the shore. About five minutes later, a second wave came, and five minutes after that, a third. Local resident Denise Fernandez captured two of the waves on video, and said that she had never seen anything like it before.

While the waves seemed to exhibit many of the hallmarks of a tsunami –shockwaves caused by seismic activity on the seafloor – the Tsunami Warning Center said that there was no significant seismic activity in the area at the time.

Jim Thomson, Principal Oceanographer at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Lab, suggested that the wave may have been a “meteo-tsunami,” a poorly understood phenomenon in which concentrated severe weather produces a shockwave that resembles a regular, seismic tsunami. He mentioned that Shishmaref’s shallow continental shelf and eastward weather patterns may make the area susceptible to this unique phenomenon.

However, radar showed the weather in the surrounding Beaufort and Chukchi seas at that time was nothing special, according to Rick Thoman, an Alaska climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He did note that satellite imagery showed a front moving south towards the Bering Strait, but he said that such a pattern was normal, and he was unsure whether it could trigger a meteo-tsunami.

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys is currently looking into the event.