Interesting ... 4+ foot mini-tsunami on US west coast.

The cause was an undersea volcano near Tonga - about
800 miles north of New Zealand. There was actually a
weather satellite over the thing - looked like a
100 megaton bomb going off, IMPRESSIVE shockwave
front rippling outwards for at least 100 miles.

Hawaii really didn't get shit - under 2-feet worth
of wave, probably because of the steeply sloping
seafloor. California got over 4 feet however, with
water pushing in far enough to do some damage
near the beachfront.

In Tonga (which is actually a group of islands rather
than just one place) the president/king had to be
rushed out of his palace in a BIG hurry. Likely we
will hear of casualties on those islands.

Anyway, big volcanic events DO happen. Someday
Vesuvius will explode again - and take pretty
much all of Naples with it. And then there's
Mt.Rainier ........

There have been two MAJOR volcanic disasters of
note. The first was teh Siberian Traps, the next
was 65 million years ago in India ... at the same
time as (perhaps CAUSED by) the big asteroid hit
on the other side of the world (think of stress
ripples going around the sphere and concentrating
again on the opposite side). These 'traps' were
basically gigantic cracks in the earth and bletched
fantastic volumes of ash and sulfur for hundreds
or thousands of years turning the skies dark and
acidifying the atmosphere. Think of everything the
GW people fear - times a thousand.