The Biggest Tsunami Ever Recorded: Inside the 1,720-Foot Wave (Video)
The biggest waves produced in the ocean – at least that we know of – max out around the triple digit range. Although nobody has officially surfed the 100-foot wave yet, that threshold is soon to be broken (if it hasn’t already, despite what the record books say).
But what’s the biggest wave ever recorded, sans surfing?
That terrifying title goes to the 1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska earthquake and megatsunami. The size of the behemoth? Experts clocked it at 1,720 feet. And Maui’s Ridge Lenny broke it down from the eyes of a surfer in the video below. Check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kj2BfT1SgY8
According to Lenny’s account:
“Believe it or not, there were people on the water that day that experienced it firsthand. I’ve been around and witnessed a lot of big waves in my life – 60, 80-foot tall monsters – and those waves seemed impossibly high. Seeing people drop in on these things, it’s something that really boggles the mind. So, when I read the stat that this wave was recorded to be 1,720-feet, it was hard to even comprehend what that would be like. It was 270 feet taller than the Empire State Building.”
The large wave was caused by a nearby earthquake, which generated a landslide from the cliffs in Lituya Bay. And when that hunk of rock hit the water, it created a displacement, resulting in the unfathomably large wave. Like Lenny mentioned, there were in fact people in the water at the time. Per the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk and Reduction:
“The largest tsunami wave ever recorded broke on a cool July night in 1958 and only claimed five lives. A 1,720 foot tsunami towered over Lituya Bay, a quiet fjord in Alaska, after an earthquake rumbled 13 miles away.
“This massive tremor triggered around 30.6 million cubic meters of rock to fall 3,000 feet into the Lituya Glacier, causing a torrent of displaced water to rear up and form a monstrous wave which, miraculously, only killed five people.”
But now for the real question: Is a wave of this magnitude actually surfable? Back to Lenny:
“The answer is: Definitely not. This isn’t a wave that you would normally see at the beach. Even at spots like Nazaré or Jaws. This was just a gigantic displacement of water. It’s a massive surge. The wave didn’t even break. It’s basically just a lump that formed up, and pushed out to sea. And this story proves that the biggest waves on earth don’t come from storms out in the middle of the ocean; they come from right here on land in the form of landslides.”