So long, it's been good to know you?

Great Wave woodcut by Katsushika Hokusai Sometimes Gothamist gets the strangest messages at work. As we were preparing today's little forecast entry, in which we were going to mention yesterday's record rainfall of 1.04 inches at LaGuardia, and the slight chance of snow flurries tomorrow morning, we received this anonymous email:

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL WARNING! A huge 300 ft. high ocean wave is moving towards your continent. Your and many other cities are in a real danger. Approximate wave moving speed is 700 km/h.
We are strongly urging you to evacuate yourself and your family as soon as possible, even though you may live far away from your city.
The tsunami will reach the continent in approximately FOUR hours.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Since this particular Gothamist works on the highest part of the Palisades, about 400ft above sea level, we intend to photograph the Hudson Valley as it fills with water this afternoon. For those of our beloved readers in the city well, wave as you float by and we'll take your picture!

Sadly, there won't be a tsunami. Tsunami are extremely rare in the Atlantic and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (whom Gothamist assumes would pick up the slack since there isn't an Atlantic Warning Center) doesn't mention any Atlantic tsunami.

We were hoping our Sunday extended forecast watch experiment would have shown lots of vacillation from the first forecast to the last. Instead, the three forecasts we've been following have been monotonically (ooh, a math word!) zeroing in on a fairly nice day.

The latest forecasts are: Weather Service: Partly cloudy, high around 50; AccuWeather: mostly sunny, high 50; and Weather.com: mostly sunny, high 53.

Image: The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1823-1829 by Katsushika Hokusai, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and online at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hokusai/.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Joe Schumacher in News on December 2, 2004 10:38 AM

Comments [rss]

Tim N.

Well, it's been four hours and no sign of...AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

glub glub

Tim N.

I agree... things are a little dull :>)

joe

Thanks for the link. Atlantic tsunamis are more frequent than I thought. Still, no 300 footer today. :(

Tim N.

Okay, what the hell. I don't need a job... Now you've all got me thinking about these things. Apparently, Atlantic Tsunamis are not all that rare, usually resulting from underwater earthquakes. Take a look at...

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/phi/reports/tsunami.htm#3

On the other hand, the odds of one making it all the way up the lower harbor to the upper harbor to Battery Park are pretty slim, at least one that would do any kind of damage (except to Spielberg's career, perhaps.)

On the other other hand, head to Coney for bitchin' waves, dude...

Standard Deviance

I got the same spam today! Maybe it's somebody looking to spam bloggers.

King Hippo

Forget scuba gear, giant reinforced transparent hamster balls are the only way to go.

Jen

I read about this tsunami a while back from an AP story, but I chose to ignore it, because I wanted to corner the market on scuba gear and oxygen tanks.

Mike F

Do you work in the Phillipines?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=10&u=/ap/20041202/ap_on_re_as/philippines_storm

Tim N.

I'm always amazed and amused by this stuff. There's a 30 story wave heading your way at 700km/h, taking dead aim at your city... and the only one who knows it is an emailer? Those guys at the Emergency Broadcast System must be asleep at the switch again! Or maybe it's being concealed in that secret government cloaking device and being used to wipe out blue states.

Watch your email... I'll bet by the end of the day the military/industrical complex or the elders of Zion will be involved.

editor

Maybe that chunk o' Canary Island finally fell off?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3963563.stm

KP

What kind of spam list are YOU on? That is friggen hillarious!

Yesterdays wind gusts blew my car (yes, I have a car) halfway out of my lane on the highway. I have driven in gusty winds before, but not winds that have done that. It was scary. Just a random share.