Tuesday, February 06, 2018

A Tsunami In Gowanus, Brooklyn? Fuhgettaboutit! It Was Just A Test

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This morning, did you wake up to a tsunami warning for Gowanus, Brooklyn?  If the AccuWeather app on your phone was buzzing to alert you of that scary possibility, you may have wondered what imminent  danger you were in.  By clicking on the warning, however, it became clear that AccuWeather had sent out the message "for test purposes only" to "determine transmission time involved in the dissemination of tsunami information."

Gowanus was not the only place that received an alarm this morning. Apparently, the test created false tsunami warnings all along the Eastern Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
The strange alert comes just weeks after an emergency warning of an incoming missile attack was mistakenly sent to Hawaiian residents.
Debbie, a friend and Gowanus resident who was kind enough to share the screenshot she took of this morning's warning on her phone, felt that "after Hawaii, this is damn irresponsible."

The National Weather Service released the following statement regarding the event. “We’re currently looking into why the test message was communicated as an actual tsunami warning, and will provide more information as soon as we have it."

Though the chances of a tsunami in Gowanus, Brooklyn, or New York City as a whole are slim, it could happen, according to this New York Magazine article:
Oh, By the Way, an Enormous Tsunami Could Strike New York City
And then, there is this You Tube video of what a massive wave could look like in New York City.

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