Let's start with this one. It's kite beach on what we can call the exhale of the tsunami. It's equivalent to a plus 2 feet high tide, I'd say.
A few minutes later, here's the same beach exposing some rocks and also a reef (to the left of the crane) infamously known like boneyard. That is equivalent to a low tide of probably minus 1.5 feet.
So, in the end, the effect of the tsunami waves was pretty much equivalent to what a spring tide in June does (about 3 feet range in Hawaii). The difference was the time interval, a few minutes instead of a few hours. That caused weird things.
For example, on the TV they were showing the Hilo bay where during the inhale the water was rushing out so fast that it looked like a stream. It made you think "there we go, after that, the wave will hit"... but instead the water came back in pretty much at the same speed without looking like a wave at all.
The Kahului harbor in Maui has a very narrow entrance. All that water sucking out created a turbolence that Alex called plume (thanks, didn't know that word).
It churned like this (with choppy boiling water at its center) all the way to sandpiles area for at least 1 hr. as the next two plumes did the same while lasting about 30 to 45min.
I feel like adding that that plume would not have formed if a man built basin like the harbor wasn't there.
Thanks Alex, that was very interesting.
Today it's March 1st. Winter in Maui for me is November, December, January and February. So today I should be sad, because what has been the best winter of the last 9 years (that's how long I've been year) is gone. But I'm not (ok, maybe just a little...). Because:
1) IT WAS the best winter of the last 9 years and I had MANY epic surfing and wavesailing sessions
2) spring in Maui is still an awesome season (unlike summer... that's when the need of going somewhere else kicks in!)
3) today has the potential to be a great wavesailing day...
We'll see!
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