Thunderbird Whale

myth:thunderbird_whale

On the Pacific Northwest coast the peoples tell how the Thunderbird seized the Whale, and in their struggle the ground shook and the sea rose up and swallowed whole villages. The tale records the Cascadia megathrust earthquake and the tsunami of January 1700 — fixed to the very night by the 'orphan tsunami' that struck Japan from a quake no one there had felt. Three centuries of oral memory, dated by a wave on a far shore. — Pacific Northwest myth / earth science