A tsunami born nearly 1,500 miles away in the Gulf of Alaska could still be swelling three feet at the Navy's Trident submarine base in Bangor and surging to 14 feet by the time it reaches the dead end of Hood Canal near Belfair, three and a half hours after the ground stops shaking on the other side of the Pacific.
State officials say the Alaska-sourced scenario matters precisely because it is the more probable one.
Along the outer coast at Westport, in Grays Harbor County, offshore waves could top 20 feet.
A separate, earlier round of state modeling focused on the closer and more destructive threat: a magnitude-9.0 rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone itself.
She has also framed the modeling as reassurance rather than alarm, telling one outlet that "understanding what that looks like for Washington...can really help dispel some of the fears" around tsunami risk generally, by replacing an abstract worry with an actual map and an actual number of hours.
A first-of-its-kind state model shows an Alaska megaquake's tsunami reaching the Navy's Bangor submarine base within hours, while a separate earlier study already flagged Bremerton's shipyard.