20 Meter Tsunami Hit New York
And it was only 2000 years ago!
In dispute is the cause, with possibilities including a landslide, an asteroid or a volcano. The evidence comes from sediment in the Hudson River:
“Our models suggest the tsunamis were up to 20 meters (66 feet) high when they entered the Hudson River,” said researcher Dallas Abbott, a geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York.
New York City lies at the mouth of the Hudson. When the scientists drilled out tubes of sediment from the New York and New Jersey area, they discovered layers of unusual debris that, they suggest, were laid down by tsunamis.
“We have layers up to maybe 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) thick,” Abbott said. “They get thinner upriver, where they’re more like 6 centimeters (2.3 inches) thick.”
