July 24, 1985 Tsunami: Ubekendt Island, Greenland

Reference #3935:

A light tremor felt by one person of two-person geological team, very shortly followed by at least four pulses of a small tsunami observed by three persons.

From letter from Michael W. Milner (Geologist): “As we went down to the beach, having signaled the outboard to pick us up and return us to the M/V MASIK, we witnessed the tide go out. I considered warning the boatman, but he was almost at the beach and had turned off the motor. The first wave carried him up onto the beach leaving him high and dry; the next wave brought him further . As we disliked the idea of trying to move the boat into the water after the oscillation ceased, we took advantage of the next two waves to free the boat , got in and went to the mother ship . We did not observe the waves after that as we quickly moved out to a distance where the waves seemed unimpressive. The time lapsed between the vibration and the tidal events, as recalled by my assistant upon our discussion regarding an earthquake versus an iceberg cause of the waves, was three minutes (probably a minimum time). I feel quite strongly that it was a tidal wave rather than a calving iceberg because I had experienced the latter at the previous stop in the fjord north and east from this site. The frequency of the waves from the calving berg was greater perhaps one every 3 or 5 seconds while that from the tidal wave was 10 to 15 seconds. The power boat had a draft of 3 dm. Probably the wave carried it two or three times that distance vertically onto the sandy delta….”