September 18, 1601 Tsunami: Lake Lucerne, Switzerland

Reference #4615:

1601, September 18. On 18 September 1601, central Switzerland was hit by one of the largest known earthquakes in central Europe (I = VII-VIII, Mw - 6.2; Swiss Seismological Service, 2002). Several towers in Lucerne were destroyed, and Renward Cysat, the registrar of Lucerne at that time, reported in his chronicle, "What scared people most was that the out flowing river Reuss flowed back into Lake Lucerne so that the riverbed between the two parts of the city almost became dry and several people could cross it by foot, before the water again vehemently advanced towards the city" (Cysat, 1601, p. 884). As Cysat traveled along the lake's shore, he recorded observations such as: "Ships had been thrown onshore ... up to two halberds [~4 m] aboye the lake level. ... Small islands and shoals had disappeared," (p. 883) as did "entire houses with sleeping people" (Cysat, 1601, p. 887). In Lucerne, the cyclic oscillation of lake level (seiche) had a period of 10 min and an estimated amplitude of 1-2 m (Cysat, 1601; Siegenthaler et al., 1987). An earthquake of this magnitude could not have directly caused such massive water movements that lasted several hours. In fact, Siegenthaler et al. (1987) linked these large-scale water movements of A.D. 1601 to two large slump deposits in the subsurface of Lake Lucerne.

Reference #13292:

The earthquake on 18 September 1601 CE with an epicenter in “Unterwalden,” Central Switzerland (Mw ca. 5.9; Fah et al., 2011; Schwarz-Zanetti et al., 2003) triggered multiple subaqueous mass movements in Lake Lucerne (Hilbe et al., 2011; Siegenthaler et al., 1987; Schnellmann et al., 2002, 2006) and a subaerial rockfall that impacted the lake surface simultaneously (Keller, 2017; Schnellmann et al., 2006; Schwarz-Zanetti et al., 2003) [...] These mass movements generated a basin-wide tsunami with wave heights exceeding 4 m on the northwestern shore of the Kuussnacht Basin and devastating inundation and run-up along other parts of the lake shore (Cysat, 1969; Hilbe & Anselmetti, 2015). The alluvial plain near Buochs was inundated by about 750 m and mountains of water were documented from eyewitness reports in the Gersau Basin (Cysat, 1969). The event caused at least eight casualties, who were drowned by the tsunami waves in Beckenried (Cysat, 1969). However, no serious damage from the waves were reported in the City of Lucerne, although a lake-level oscillation (seiche) with an estimated amplitude of 1–2 m and a period of 10 min was reported (Cysat, 1969); Siegenthaler et al., 1987).