August 17, 2014 Tsunami: SW Australia
A tsunami of meteorological origin began at SW Australia on August 17, 2014. The water rose as high as 0.5 meters.
Where the waves reached
The source of the tsunami. No runup with a place is recorded for it.
- Under 1 m
- 1 to 3 m
- 3 to 10 m
- 10 to 30 m
- 30 m and more
- Height not recorded
The tsunami
- Date
- August 17, 2014
- Source
- SW Australia
- Cause
- Meteorological
- Maximum water height
- 0.5 m (1.6 ft)
- Runups recorded
- 0
- Waters
- Ocean
- How certain
- Probable tsunami
The toll
- Damage
- Severe (about $5 to $25 million)
Where the literature gives no number, NCEI records a description on a scale of 1 to 4, printed here in its words. Damage is in millions of US dollars of the year of the event, not adjusted for inflation.
What the record says
NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.
[…] even smaller meteotsunamis with lower wave heights have resulted in damage; for example, on 17 August 2014, a meteotsunami propagating along the mouth of the Swan River in Fremantle resulted in a ship breaking its moorings and impacting on a rail bridge (reference #11274)
Strong currents ripped car carrier and cargo ships from the wharf, colliding and badly damaging railway bridge on a major route that was then closed for 2 weeks […] On 17 August 2014, strong currents at Fremantle docks ripped a wharf free, where two cargo ships were moored. These ships collided with and severely damaged a nearby railway bridge, a critical connection in the Perth area, which was subsequently closed for 2 weeks (Pattiaratchi & Wijeratne, 2015), causing the multi‐million cost due to rebuilding the line and redirecting the passenger and cargo traffics to longer routes. (reference #14271)
More
Every tsunami in 2014The 2000sTsunamis of AustraliaThis day in weather historyAlerts in force
Sources
Tsunami events and runups from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-09-24. NCEI tsunami event 6115.