As we already know, Hurricanes threaten our Gulf Coast every year. Now, we can add the threat of tsunamis to hit the Gulf Coast.

Ever since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, researchers from the National Weather Service say if a landslide happened in the Mississippi Canyon, a deep trench on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, a 15-foot wall of water could roll across Grand Isle.

Joe Rua, the tsunami program manager from the National Weather Service’s Lake Charles office, says the threat is real, but doesn’t want anyone to panic. He also said:

It’s a low probability event but a very high impact event, so a lot of people are not aware that there’s a tsunami hazard along the Gulf Coast. What causes a tsunami here in the Gulf of Mexico are basically submarine landslides – not really earthquakes, but the kind of a landslide that occurs along the Continental Shelf.

He also mentioned that landslides”don’t register seismically like an earthquake, and the coast would get just a few hours of warning.

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