These things are 100% waves. It's not a misnomer. It fits the scientific definition of waves and it fits our intuition of what waves are. These are NOT tides.

https://www.noaa.gov/explainers/science-behind-tsunamis

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K0balt 8 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, they are waves, but they are often very long waves. A typical 1m wave might be 20m long. A tsunami wave might be a kilometer long or longer. That is why people say they are like a tide. The wave arrives, then does not recede for several minutes. So, while a 4m wind driven wave might break over a seawall and even wash a car off the road, a 4m tsunami washes ships over that same seawall and floods the city.

It’s a wave, but it is often not at all like a regular ocean wave. I’ve been at sea when a 3m tsunami passed, we barely felt it. If it had been a 3m wind wave in that otherwise calm sea, it would have knocked dinner off the table.

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Tor3 8 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A tsunami absolutely does not fit our intuition of what waves are. It looks like a wave. But it does not stop. It just continues. That little wave goes on an on, farther and farther inland. After an hour it may still go on. It's a nightmare wave, because it doesn't not fit one's intuition of what waves are.

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ninetyninenine 7 days ago | parent [-]

>It looks like a wave.

and it IS a wave. I don't understand the resistance here. It BOTH is a wave and looks like a wave.

But because it does not stop, it is not a "wave". Let's just stop with the strange pedantism.

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Tor3 6 days ago | parent [-]

I'm reacting against the word "intuition" here. Nobody said it isn't a wave. But it's not like a wave as our intuition says.

(Though it does not _always_ look like a wave - check out the timelapse video from Kuji harbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1B1J6sgFxk - that's why you'll sometimes see people talking about it looking like a (very) high tide. As an example of the nightmare "wave" which doesn't stop, and is thus un-intuitive.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3618dZoiaPE which is incidentally also from Kuji, but from 2011)

	▲	ninetyninenine 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		I know what you’re talking about. But intuitively it’s still a wave.