Say a large meteor struck the Atlantic ocean. Say, 100 miles due east of Philadelphia. Say, 500 meters diameter. Would the resulting tsunami reach and cross the Appalacians? Would I be safe in, say, Pittsburgh?
To ask another way, How big would a meteor have to be for the tsunami to reach over the Appalacians?
The reason I’m thinking about this is that on the West Wing last night there was a meteor scare and somebody remarked that it would cause flooding in Indiana. I would think a meteor would have to be PRETTY big to cross the Appalacians, but what do I know?
Are you implying that Lake Michigan is in New Jersey?! I already corrected this glaring error. Really, I was thinking 500 miles and somehow type 100. Atlantic ocean.
Sorry. I didn’t see the show. I was just wondering how Indiana would be more likely to be flooded by a meteor crashing into a large body of water…Atlantic or L. Michigan?
Since IANA astrophysicist, my response probably isn’t worth much here. But I expect that the problems generated by the impact of a half-kilometer metorite 500 miles away would be vast and varied enough to make tsunamis but a small part of your concerns.
You’re talking about a object with roughly 1000 times the mass of the one that created the Barringer Crater in Arizona. Sounds like trouble to me.
Well there’s this simulation of an asteroid twice that size striking 360 miles off the Eastern seabord in 2880. The article says the tsunami would be 400 feet high and penetrate two miles inland; looks like Indiana’s off the hook.
And for fun there’s this Earth impact effects calculator to play with, but unfortunately it doesn’t include tsunami in its calculated effects.
Well, without getting a few more degrees and spending a lot of time doing comuter simulations, it’s hard to tell. But the nearest analogy I can think of is the mega-tsunamis forecasted from the collapse of volcanoes in the Canary Islands which are estimated to have the same approximate effect as a 200-500 meteor strike. This report downplays the risk, but that’s assuming a landfall at the location of the Canary Islands and not right off the beach of Atlantic City. Still, even the most pessimistic estimates I’ve been able to find only have 50 meter tsunamis penetrating 5-7 miles inland. That 50 meter figure is from a 900 meter wave that has travelled across the entire Atlantic and had time to disperse – I haven’t been able to find any estimates of how far a 900 meter tsunami would travel inland.
Not before, either… the Atlantic is 55 miles due east of here, on the other side of New Jersey. 100 miles due east is 45 miles out to sea. That puts you on the downward slope of the continental shelf, which goes from a depth of 240 to 3000 feet in a hurry according to this chart.
