dr_phil_physics | Tsunami (Take 2) (Reply)

Apologies

I didn't realize that the link I had used yesterday worked for me probably because I was on Facebook. I've found this on the Guardian UK website:

(From yesterday's post) It's about six minutes long and shows the tsunami waters racing into a town. Right at the beginning there's a white minivan turning the corner and racing ahead of the flood -- I don't know if they managed to get to high ground or not. Thankfully I did not notice any people in any of the other vehicles.

We like to think of ourselves as living in a modern technological age. Sure, we deal with storms and such, often treating them as inconveniences to our normally scheduled days. But the speed and power of natural events such as happened along the coast of Japan is in a whole different league. This is not Hollywood special effects wizardry in Yet Another Disaster Epic. This is real. And though six minutes isn't all that long, it's much longer than the snippets which have been endlessly played and replayed on CNN, Weather Channel and the various networks.

By the time you get to the end of this video, we are in a different territory in terms of the level of destruction and what kinds of things are floating by in a rush. There is an awesomeness and indeed a majesty of witnessing this sort of power -- especially, I'm afraid to admit, from the safety of a comfortable office half a world away.

More Information

This is Kesennuma in Miyagi prefecture. Here's a link to Google streets view of where this video was shot. But I also did some screen shots so you can see the "before" view.