Some residents along the eastern U.S. – including the Space Coast – may have gotten an alert about a potential tsunami but weather officials say it was a false alert.
Authorities say there was an actual tsunami test was conducted about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday but that it somehow was transmitted to sites operated by a private commercial weather company, News 6 partner FLORIDA TODAY reported. Residents may have received alerts on their mobile devices. Weather officials from New England to New Orleans tweeted out messages quickly declaring the tsunami warning notice as erroneous.
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“We don’t know what caused it to go across the site. Nothing went across NOAA weather radio or our site. Others may have picked on it,” said Derric Weitlich, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Melbourne.
“Of course you don’t want a test going out as an alert. We started hearing about it from some of our managers.”
NWS We are getting reports that there was an application that sent an erroneous tsunami message. There is NO tsunami threat to east central Florida. #flwx
Tsunamis are triggered by earthquakes and are threats to coastal areas across the globe, potentially causing widespread destruction. The Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 caused the deaths of over 250,000 people while displacing hundreds of thousands more. A tsunami warning means that an actual tsunami has been generated and could be nearing a land mass.
As a precaution, the Tsunami Warning Center periodically issues tests as part of an alerting system for residents living along the seaboard.
Contact Gallop at 321-242-3642, jdgallop@floridatoday.com and Twitter at @JDGallop