Oregon Coast Tsunami Findings: Port Orford Received Largest Wave at 2.4 ft

Published 08/04/25 at 6:25 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Port Orford, Oregon) – Last week's tsunami alert across the west coast of the U.S. and Canada took the region by storm, caused by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake offshore from Russia. Tsunami advisories and watches went up across the Oregon and Washington coastlines, and this time around nothing major occurred. No visible waves – no bays or harbors getting stirred up and batted around, as some did with the tsunami of 2011. Click to see full graphic

However, minor extra wave height was getting recorded rolling in, with buoys and instruments from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picking up some different activity.

Sunday, the National Weather Service (NWS) in Medford released what it called “preliminary” wave height measurements of what came barreling through, and the highest was at Port Orford at 2.4 feet at 3:12 a.m.

Garibaldi came in second at 1.2 feet at 12:24 a.m.

Charleston came in third at 1 foot at 11:30 a.m.

Newport's South Beach area saw .7 ft at 6:10 a.m. and the least highest of the bunch was Astoria's 0.3 ft. at 5:29 a.m.

All these, of course, happened underwater and more or less away from the eyes of witnesses onshore.

The NWS' Alexis Hermansen told Oregon Coast Beach Connection they did not receive any reports of eyewitnesses to larger waves or hear of any damage.

Port Orford (ODOT)

“I know we were seeing some observations of tsunami waves around one to three feet on July 30th - so that morning after,” Hermansen said. “And that's at Port Orford. We were seeing some differences and it's really Port Orford that has the highest along the Oregon coast, but otherwise it was pretty minimal.”

Hermansen said that it's entirely possible people could have seen the larger waves coming in, but there would not have been anything to differentiate it from the rest.

“You could see a wave, but at one to three feet you're not going to entirely notice that difference,” she said. “It continuously comes in. It's pretty choppy. But with our actual instruments that we had there, it was able to say 'hey, you should be this... around this time of day,' and it is going to be 1 to 3 feet higher than normal.”

You can see the various buoys and their live data at the different coastal weather pages for Rockaway Beach, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Astoria, Coos Bay, Port Orford, Florence and Yachats. It's interesting to note there are no buoys and NOAA stations at areas like Cannon Beach, Lincoln City, etc – only those with harbors. (See links below)

The graphic says these are “preliminary” measurements of the tsunami waves, which Hermansen said only means there may or may not be some subtle changes in data.

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