Alan Auld de Shuniah, Ontario, said he left to look at Lake Superior on Saturday and was among the people who saw that the waters went back, something that compared to the drainage of a bathtub.
“At first we joked with everyone who said: ‘Who pulled the cap?'” Said Auld.
“Seeing Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, can do something like that, that is quite powerful. So we were amazed.”
On the east border of Thunder Bay, Shuniah is a municipal municipality along the north coast of the upper lake.
Massive fluctuations in water levels have also intrigued multiple scientists, who think the area experienced a meteotsunami, a type of tsunami wave that can make water levels near the costs rise and fall quickly.
While traditional tsunamis are caused by the movement of the seabed such as earthquakes, Meteotenses are linked to quick -movement climatic conditions, such as thunderstorms.
A great change in air pressure accompanied by high wind speeds can play to generate a wave of Meteotsunami, said Eric Anderson, an associated professor at the Colorado Mining School that has been studying Meteotsunamis for more than a decade.
Anderson said researchers are analyzing atmospheric conditions and water level data to discover what happened last weekend.
“We have enough evidence to say that this was an event similar to Meteotsunami,” he said.
To officially confirm that it was a Meteotsunami, Anderson said, researchers must create a computer model that simulates how the waves move around the lake, which will take some time.
Seiche or meteotsunami?
Auld and others who saw the water level fluctuations thought it was a Seiche.
Anderson said a Seiche is a stationary wave that oscillates, such as the water that is placed from one place to another in a bathtub. In the upper lake, a Seiche period would last approximately eight hours, he said.
Anderson said that Saturday’s event occurred too fast to be a Seiche and was more consistent with a Meteteo.
He said that Meteotsunamis is spreading waves that move through water, like a wave that begins at one end of the lake and ends in another, and have a much faster time frame, which lasts minutes at an hour or two.
On Saturday, the water level meters recorded changes of dozens of centimeters to a meter in Lake Superior, said the researcher.
“That is a lot of water change. This is a great.”
It is rare that a Meteotsunami of that scale happens in the upper lake, perhaps occurs a couple of times as a maximum, Anderson said. While he is not aware of any death or damage, he said that Saturday’s event could have been easily in drowning.
“This is on par with our most catastrophic Meteotsunamis,” he said.
Dangerous meteotsunamis: experts
While it is rare, it is important that people know Meteotsunamis because they can be dangerous, said Chin Wu, a professor at Wisconsin University in Madison who has experience in Meteotsunamis.
Shuniah, Ontario. Resident Alan Auld presented this video of the water levels that fluctuates in front of his house. Scientists say they believe that the video shows a meteoteo, which is a type of large wave tat can be caused by atmospheric pressure changes.
Wu said there have been multiple meteotsunamis incidents that result in deaths. He added that people on beaches and docks can be dragged during periods of fluctuation of the water level.
“The potential dangers are water levels that fluctuate from one place to another, particularly once the water levels rise and fall as I see in the video. Once the water level falls, they will drag people outside the beaches and cause drowning.”
Warns against beaches and coasts in the midst of thunderstorms or rapid changes in water levels.
Researchers are still trying to discover how to predict when Meteotsunamis could happen, Wu said.
“Similar to tornadoes, we want to make sure that we can always predict this type of dangerous event and warn people in advance.”
