As the article discussed, on one of the Canary Islands, an active volcano has built up a large unstable mass that is threatening to fall into the sea. If that happens, they believe it will generate a massive tsunami that would cause terrible destruction along America's east coast, one of the most heavily populated areas anywhere. The one good thing would be that we'd have several hours of warning. The bad part is that such a warning would likely result in chaos. Look at how long it took to evacuate parts of Florida last year when the hurricanes were coming. Perhaps all they'd need to do is get people to higher ground instead of long distances inland.

This morning, I read about how some islands in the Indian Ocean had little or no damage from last month's tsunami. Those islands, including Diego Garcia, jut abruptly out of the ocean floor. Islands with a gradual rise in the sea floor suffered the most damage. This caused me to wonder about the continental shelf along our east coast. There are places over 100 miles from shore that are quite shallow, on the order of 100-200 feet. Would this make a tsunami higher or would the very long gradual decrease in ocean depth slow the wave through friction, causing it to lose energy? In other words, would the continential shelf make the wave more destructive or would it actually serve to weaken the wave through friction? It sounds like a good thing to simulate.