with a splash of blue curacao

Stick the following item in your inaugural "I did not know that" file for 2005... unless of course, you did. Or do. Whatever.

Point is, I don't recall anyone talking about Cumbre Vieja... unless of course, I was zoned out, musing about the Caribbean and assumed you were talking about a frothy seaside drink. Mmmmm... Cumbre Vieja. Hit me, barkeep!

Love to all and best of luck this year. You might need it.

Woxo

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Sir David King: Just suppose it was us...

Don't be complacent, warns the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser. A tsunami could also happen in the Atlantic, and Britain would be dangerously unprepared

Independent UK

02 January 2005

-excerpt-

A few years ago, Steven Ward at Santa Cruz and Simon Day at University College London did some calculations about the giant tsunamis that would be generated by the collapse into the Atlantic of one of the Canary Islands. Cumbre Vieja is a mass of rock off the coast of La Palma island and is waiting to collapse. Ward and Day showed that tsunamis caused by this would overwhelm the Canary Islands and batter the coasts of Africa, Europe and the Americas. Britain would have a six-hour warning before a 30ft wave hit us. New York would have nine hours.

How likely is this event? And when is it likely to occur? Activity on Cumbre Vieja in 1949 caused movement of the west flank of the volcanoes, a rock mass estimated to be twice the size of the Isle of Man. It is deemed likely that it will eventually collapse at any time in the next 10,000 years. The question of whether we should take action to pre-empt something which may not happen for several millennia is a difficult challenge for risk analysts, but one British geophysicist, Bill McGuire, is calling for an early-warning system for the North Atlantic, and after what we have seen in the Indian Ocean, I would endorse that. It may be verging on the distasteful to raise the possibility of such a shocking event happening here, as if the awful events we have seen were somehow not enough. But surely now, when public consciousness of this issue is at its height, is the time to raise the question.

more...

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=597245

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Expert slams wave threat inertia

BBC News

Tuesday, 10 August, 2004

A scientist has attacked the inaction over a threat from a dangerous volcano in the Canary Islands which could send a tidal wave crashing against the US.

Bill McGuire of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre said no one was keeping a proper watch on the mountain.

If Cumbre Vieja volcano erupts, it may send a rock slab the size of a small island crashing into the sea, creating a huge tidal wave, or tsunami.

Walls of water 300 feet high would travel to the US at the speed of a jet.

Within three hours, the wave would swamp the east coast of Africa, within five hours it would reach southern England and within 12 it could hit America's east coast.

The rock is in the process of slipping into the sea, but the trigger that sends it into the Atlantic is likely to be an eruption of Cumbre Vieja. According to Professor McGuire, Cumbre Vieja could blow "any time".

New York, Washington DC, Boston and Miami would be almost wiped out by the tsunami generated by the insecure rock falling into the Atlantic.

more...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3553368.stm

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Scientists warn of massive wave

CNN Sci-Tech

August 29, 2001

LONDON, England -- While stressing that there is no indication it could happen soon, Atlantic coastlines in Europe, Africa and the Americas are under threat from a monster wave of Hollywood -- even Biblical -- proportions, scientists have warned.

They fear that a massive landslide following a major volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands would send a 300-foot wave across the Atlantic, causing devastation to coastal towns and cities.

British and U.S. scientists who have issued the warning predict that, in the worst-case scenario, the tidal wave would destroy the coasts of Florida and Brazil.

more...

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/08/29/tidal.wave/

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Lethal shockwave from an island in the sun

Volcanic activity on the Canary Isles could send a tidal wave to devastate Florida. Phillip Henry monitors the changing shape of La Paima

The Independent

Monday 24th June 1996

It reads like the plot from a disaster movie. Florida is devastated by a tidal wave tens of metres high. The destruction and loss of life is immeasurable. The wave which caused so much devastation crossed the Atlantic in just a few hours, unseen until it reached the American coast.

more...

http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/lapalma/inde9606.html

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The Geology of La Palma

http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/lapalma/geology.html