Observations of extreme wave runup events on the US Pacific Northwest coast

Li, Chuan; Özkan-Haller, H. Tuba; García Medina, Gabriel; Holman, Robert A.; Ruggiero, Peter; Jensen, Treena M.; Elson, David B.; Schneider, William R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-107-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-107-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Coastal hazards and hydro-meteorological extremes

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-107-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

Research article

|

31 Jan 2023

Research article |

| 31 Jan 2023

Observations of extreme wave runup events on the US Pacific Northwest coast

Chuan Li, H. Tuba Özkan-Haller, Gabriel García Medina, Robert A. Holman, Peter Ruggiero, Treena M. Jensen, David B. Elson, and William R. Schneider

Data sets

National Data Buoy Center NOAA https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov

Tides and Currents NOAA https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/map/index.html?region=Oregon

Tides and Currents NOAA https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tsunami/#

Video supplement

Sneaker wave south of Coos Bay: Caught on camera The Oregonian https://youtu.be/RPypT9dOvSY

Seabrook Sneaker Wave, 1 injured ehings12 https://youtu.be/F0a_DDzEk-c

mini tsunami Washington State on january 16, 2016 Information planet Z https://youtu.be/HSCCe1y6-b8

Pacific Beach Mini Tsunami Jeremy Leaming https://youtu.be/S6GJI6i6c1k

Storm Surge - High Tide - Ocean Park, Wa Beach Approach "Cars Scrambling" Today 1-18-2018 Joshua Wilkins https://youtu.be/IGSGNpfRFqQ

Short summary

In this work, we examine a set of observed extreme, non-earthquake-related and non-landslide-related wave runup events. Runup events with similar characteristics have previously been attributed to trapped waves, atmospheric disturbances, and abrupt breaking of long waves. However, we find that none of these mechanisms were likely at work in the observations we examined. We show that instead, these runup events were more likely due to energetic growth of bound infragravity waves.