<story><title>How big was the Tonga eruption?</title><url>https://graphics.reuters.com/TONGA-VOLCANO/lgpdwjyqbvo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RowanH</author><text>Heard it go bang, 2600km away, echoing through the hills around our place at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. That&amp;#x27;s pretty staggering to think about it. Then to see other peoples Home Assistants around the world pick up the change in pressure on opposite sides of the planet. Mental, just mental...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spartanatreyu</author><text>I live on the beach on the East coast of Australia. We had a marine tsunami warning. We were a few floors up so I wasn&amp;#x27;t really worried about myself.&lt;p&gt;About 12ish hours after the initial eruption I thought that anything that was going to happened had all passed by hours ago and I was talking with friends online.&lt;p&gt;Randomly I started hearing this white noise kind of sound (it sounded like the bubbling water of a kettle without any whistling). I took my headphones off and opened my door trying to find the source of the noise, thinking that the kettle had turned on.&lt;p&gt;I looked outside and what was small surf conditions only 3 minutes before was extremely turbulent with white frothy waves moving in every direction. It looked like it was reacting to an earthquake but there was no movement in the ground. (I&amp;#x27;ve felt an earthquake there before which is rare here but since our foundations are in the sands I&amp;#x27;ve had the experience and could tell there was no earthquake in the ground on the morning after the eruption)&lt;p&gt;Since the waves were moving in every direction, some of them were colliding head on. When this happened and the peaks and troughs were interacting in the right way they were shooting out jets of water spray at my eye level about 15m above sea level (I could tell since they were intersecting the horizon from my perspective).&lt;p&gt;It continued for about a 30 seconds, calming down over another 30 seconds. After the surf had lowered itself to its previous levels, the whole top of the water going back about 50ish meters was covered in thick brown foam. All of the turbulent waves had dredged up the sand beneath it.&lt;p&gt;The foam slowly disappeared over about an hour with the last bits being the foam that ended up getting washed ashore and out of the water&amp;#x27;s reach.</text></comment>
<story><title>How big was the Tonga eruption?</title><url>https://graphics.reuters.com/TONGA-VOLCANO/lgpdwjyqbvo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RowanH</author><text>Heard it go bang, 2600km away, echoing through the hills around our place at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. That&amp;#x27;s pretty staggering to think about it. Then to see other peoples Home Assistants around the world pick up the change in pressure on opposite sides of the planet. Mental, just mental...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway894345</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve heard that the Krakatoa eruption was so loud that the sound wave reverberated around the globe several times. I assume that means if you&amp;#x27;re on exactly the other end of the world, the sound is coming at you from every direction? Similarly, no matter where you are on earth, the sound is coming at you from different directions at different times? Of course, I&amp;#x27;m assuming that the sound wave was in audible frequencies which may or may not be the case...</text></comment>