In 2007, a massive landslide crashed into B.C.'s Lake Chehalis, triggering a tsunami that surged 38 metres up the shore — one of the most dramatic inland waves ever recorded. Scientists were able to reconstruct the event and reveal how it unfolded — as well as what it could tell us about the next "lake tsunami."

British Columbia

British Columbia experienced a rare lake tsunami at Chehalis Lake when a massive landslide in 2007 sent millions of cubic meters of debris into the water, generating a wave that surged up to 38 meters high. Scientists have used landscape evidence, advanced imaging, and sediment analysis to reconstruct the event and validate models that can identify other lakes at risk.

The event was triggered by heavy rain on snow, which destabilized fractured bedrock and led to the landslide. Researchers are now using sediment records and hazard modeling to better understand and predict such events, especially as climate change may increase the risk of similar occurrences in the region.

B.C. has seen a lake tsunami before and it could happen again

You've heard of tsunamis triggered by earthquakes, underwater volcanoes, even meteors. But maybe the strangest tsunami of all is the Lake Tsunami. They're real and they've happened right here in BC, right here at this lake. This is one of the most well-documented cases in the world, Chehalis Lake. Back in 2007, a massive landslide crashed into this lake just west of Harrison. About 3 million cubic meters of rock and debris from Mount Auroch fell more than half a kilometer straight down. When that mass hit the 175-meter deep water, it displaced so much energy that a wave shot 38 meters up the opposite shore. That's roughly equal to a 12-story building. Then that wave raced down the full 8-kilometer length of this lake, still reaching 7 meters high on the far end. Luckily, no one was here that day. But if it had happened in July instead of December, when this area is usually full of campers, it could have been devastating. So how do scientists know all of this if no one saw it happen? First, this landscape told them. Those trees stripped bare dozens of meters above the waterline. Then the tech. High-resolution topographic data, aerial imagery, and sonar scans of the lake bottom. Together, they painted the picture of the landslide and the waves it unleashed. The trigger for all of this? Heavy rain on snow. It saturated this already fractured bedrock, reducing stability until the whole slope failed. And when it did, it disintegrated into a debris avalanche, slamming into the lake at 60 meters per second. That's where the models come in. Scientists simulated the impact and wave formation, and the results matched almost exactly with what they found on the ground. That validation means we can now use the same tools to identify other risky lakes. Ones with steep slopes, deep water, unstable geology, lakes like Salmon Arm or even Harrison. If we want to really fully understand these events more, we need to look at reconstructing past events. One way to do this is using kind of the landslide deposits themselves and the features in the lake. And we're working towards a different type of method, which uses actually the sediment on the bottom of the lake, which is a really good archive of thousands of years of earthquakes, climatic shifts and events like lake tsunamis. Chehalis Lake is our modern example to do that, to understand actually what impact those events have. The more events we can reconstruct and understand why they happened, the more we can actually get to a larger hazard model that could fit in the existing hazard models that BC has. Events like this aren't common, but they are part of BC's landscape story. And as climate change makes slopes wetter and less stable, what happened here at Chehalis might not stay a one-off.

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Breakdown