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Science 4 December 1992:
Vol. 258. no. 5088, pp. 1614 - 1617
DOI: 10.1126/science.258.5088.1614
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Articles

A Tsunami About 1000 Years Ago in Puget Sound, Washington

Brian F. Atwater 1 and Andrew L. Moore 2

1 U.S. Geological Survey at Department of Geological Sciences, University of Washington, AJ-20, Seattle, WA 98195
2 Department of Geological Sciences, University of Washington, AJ-20, Seattle, WA 98195

Water surged from Puget Sound sometime between 1000 and 1100 years ago, overrunning tidal marshes and mantling them with centimeters of sand. One overrun site is 10 kilometers northwest of downtown Seattle; another is on Whidbey Island, some 30 kilometers farther north. Neither site has been widely mantled with sand at any other time in the past 2000 years. Deposition of the sand coincided—to the year or less—with abrupt, probably tectonic subsidence at the Seattle site and with landsliding into nearby Lake Washington. These findings show that a tsunami was generated in Puget Sound, and they tend to confirm that a large shallow earthquake occurred in the Seattle area about 1000 years ago.

Submitted on July 24, 1992
Accepted on October 22, 1992


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)