What is the worst that can happen ? Is it true that as it flows, N Falls is eroding rocks back towards one of The Great Lakes and at some point far off in the future, that lake will empty straight over the Falls ?
Surely it would just boil off a huge quantity of water as well as laying waste to the surrounding area ?
If it were possible to use a large enough nuclear device at another location outside the US, then the risk to the whole US Atlantic seaboard from a cataclysmic event in The Canaries would have a far greater effect that anything dropped in the US itself :
Volcanic Island, Canaries Mega Tsunami …
That Canary Islands tsunami is back in the news again in
the USA. The one, that is, that foreign experts like Prof Bill
McGuire say will be triggered by an eruption and
mega-landslide in La Palma and which island authorities
prefer not to talk about.
But in the hypothetical case of half of La Palma crashing
down into the sea tomorrow, the mega-tsunami it would stir
up would, after a few hours crossing the Atlantic, slam into
the US’s east coast – and lay it waste.
And although there’s no telling when the crunch might occur
– next week, next century or next millennium – some
people across the pond are getting pretty twitchy and are
preparing themselves, right now. Just in case.
Take Onslow, Carteret and Duplin Counties, for instance,
which at the end of April staged a three day exercise …
The disintegration of the rock, this earlier study predicted, would produce a debris avalanche deposit extending 60 kilometres from the island. The energy released by the collapse would be equal to the electricity consumption of the entire United States in half a year.
The new model - which provides further insights into the consequences of the collapse - predicts that the landslide would create an exceptionally large tsunami with the capability to travel great distances and reaching speeds of up to 800 kilometres per hour. Immediately after Cumbre Vieja’s collapse a dome of water 900 metres high and tens of kilometres wide will form only to collapse and rebound. As the landslide continues to move underwater a series of wave crests and troughs are produced which soon develop into a tsumani ‘wave train’ which fuels the waves progress. After only 10 minutes, the model predicts, the tsunami will have moved a distance of almost 250 kilometres.
The greatest effects are predicted to occur north, west and south of the Canaries. On the West Saharan shore waves are expected to reach heights of 100 metres from crest to trough and on the north coast of Brazil waves over 40 metres high are anticipated. Florida and the Caribbean, the final destinations in the North Atlantic to be affected by the tsunami, will have to brace themselves for receiving 50-metre high waves - higher than Nelson’s column in London, some 8 to 9 hours after the landslide. Towards Europe waves heights will be smaller, but substantial tsunami waves will hit the Atlantic coasts of Britain, Spain Portugal and France.
For tsunamis striking flat-lying coastline regions such as Florida, calculating the inundation distance - the extent to which water penetrates inland taking the form of fast moving floods after waves break - is crucial to assessing potential damage. Dr. Day and his colleagues estimate inundation distances in the region of several kilometres from the coast. Accurate estimates of the scale of economic loss are yet to be made but are thought to be in the multi-trillion USD range.
Not sure how big an explosion it would take to actually precipitate that - probably beyond human capability, though I recall reading that there was an attempt made to bomb Mount Fuji to try and cause an eruption during WW2.