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by bitwize 1398 days ago
Don't get too comfortable if you're on the East Coast. Whatever survives sea level rise due to global heating, will be wiped out by the megatsunami caused by the ensuing landslide when La Palma erupts.
6 comments

The volume of water displacement from a volcanic landslide is orders of magnitude less than that displaced by undersea fault quakes; while it could trigger a "local" tsunami that could impact the African or European coast, it would certainly not be in the same category as a "big one", nor very significant for North America.

Consider that the displaced water from this point event would radiate out in 360 degrees from the Canaries, dissipating with the square of distance traveled.

My East Coast tsunami money is on a submarine landslide. Long odds but what a payout.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=us+east+coast+submarine+landslide

In theory tho, a well placed earthquake could bump those odds https://geology.com/noaa/atlantic-ocean-tsunami/

With the way things are going, this might just get struck off the bingo card.
Didn't La Palma erupt in the last two years?
Isn't that theory from some total nutjob?
No, but the consensus is that the intial modelling wasn’t accurate enough in several areas, which when updated leads to a much lower risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbre_Vieja_tsunami_hazard
It is not exactly a volcanic eruption that is the threat, but the collapse of the flank of the island (which might cause or be triggered by an eruption.) I believe Hawai'i presents a similar risk, and undersea avalanches (such as the prehistoric Storegga slides in the Norwegian Sea) pose a tsunami threat in many parts of the world not noted for their earthquake risk.
What’s the bad news for chicago?