A daughter phoned me this morning wanting to get her friend's phone number in the Whitianga area so she could warn them as they are right as sea level. She was really worried and thinking she might save their lives.
I explained the situation to her [it was about 9am]. She imagined that waves get bigger and bigger the closer they come [I suppose like deep ocean waves are low amplitude but peak at the beach to form high breakers].
For decades [3 now] I have been very mindful of Taupo going to erupt and get on the news around the world. It's morbidly amusing that police and other authorities are harassing children and others in Taupo, pedantically explaining how crash helmets on bicycles are essential and that it's illegal to ride on the footpath so they must ride on the road so the cars and trucks can run them over, all the while the magma chamber is filling with fluids ready to boil and then burn when mixing with air sending a pumice mass 5km x 5km x 50km deep [your dimensions may vary] shooting 10km or 20 km into the sky with 100 kph frothy Hinuera Stone racing down the Waikato river valley which now goes through Hamilton instead of turning right at Karapiro and out across the Hauraki plains.
There is a false idea that volcanologists will get warning. They won't. Yes, there will be rumblings, but they will be brief.
One day, the sun and moon tidal positions, low air pressure and low lake and ground water levels will combine for low pressure insufficient to hold the subterranean volatile liquids in liquid phase. They will start boiling, displacing surface water and soil, which will reduce pressure further and release the whole column which will boil in seconds rather than days [there is a LOT of superheated liquid down there which, when the pressure is off, goes straight to gas phase in a big hurry].
That will disrupt travel south, it will disrupt the Tongariro and Waikato river electricity production, trout fishing in the Tongariro and lake Taupo will be canceled, electricity transmission from the south island will be broken, forestry will be problematic, farming in the Waikato will be difficult with water, mud and pumice [some molten] covering it 100 metres deep, politicians flying to Wellington will have to divert further west to avoid getting pumice in the engines. With pumice clouds blowing westwards, the Bay of Plenty and Rotorua will not be so desirable so we'll have to holiday up north, making weekend traffic congestion even worse around Puhoi and Warkworth. But at least the children in Taupo will have their crash helmets on and will be riding bikes on the road as the pumice rises in the sky above them. Their crash helmets would help keep the pumice off but not for long.
My early warning system for that an tsunamis is to keep the time I spend in the hazard zone to a minimum. Having a house well above sea level and behind the Coromandel peninsula, Waitakeres, Great Barrier Island and Rangitoto offers considerable protection against even 99.999th percentile tsunamis. Being away from the coast-line avoids the phreatic eruptions like Orakei, Panmure, and other steam tuff eruptions. Scoria eruptions aren't a worry. They would be fun to watch.
The beaches at Mission Bay and Kohimarama have been well-designed. Can you claim credit for those? I'm impressed by the sand retention. <On waves, my experience has been on the numerical modelling side, for coastal engineering purposes > new-zealand-pictures.co.nz
Mqurice
PS: That means you knew Arved Raudkivi's daughter [a friend at the time described her in glowing terms though I don't think I ever saw her]. Hmmmm.... just how well did you know her? <
I never attended any of Arvid's classes, because I didn't do a BE, but I've known him since a child at Ardmore. His wife was very friendly with my Mum, and he was a colleague of my father > Go on, taunt the readers with our wicked Kiwi ways... on the beach, the sun, the heat, the moon, the stars, the romance...
A quick check of WhitePages, Facebook, ... drums up not many in NZ yellow.co.nz |
