Have you heard of the little fishing town of Copalis Beach? It’s located on Washington’s beautiful Pacific Ocean coastline – just north of Ocean Shores.
Copalis Beach which is mostly known for being a quiet fishing town is also famous for solving a 300-year-old mystery – a mystery which is explained in detail in the Netflix series, ‘Earthstorm’.
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The Netflix series, Episode 3 ‘Earthquake’, goes into great detail about the Copalis Ghost Forest and an unexplained tsunami that hit the shores of Japan in the year 1700. The Japanese are known for keeping excellent records of tsunamis dating back many hundreds of years and have been able to link earthquakes to nearly all tsunamis, except for one that occurred in 1700, known as The Orphan Tsunami. The massive tsunami seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and killed thousands of Japanese residents.
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According to a story in Grays Harbor Talk, it wasn’t until a paper titled, “The Orphan Tsunami of 1700” by Brian Atwater was published that scientists were able to link a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that occurred off the Washington coast in January of 1700 with the tsunami that hit Japan the same year.
What can the Ghost Forest of Copalis Beach, Washington tell us about our future?
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The Netflix docuseries shows how the powerful earthquake that occurred on the coast of Washington in January 1700, devastated not only the shores of Japan but also took out much of the Pacific Northwest coastline, leaving an errie Ghost Forest in Copalis Beach and other evidence along the Washington and Oregon coasts. The stumps and ghost trees tell a story of an enormous event that happened along the Cascadia Fault line. Could such an event happen again in our lifetime? Experts say, yes. To learn more about this event and other natural disasters check out the Docuseries, ‘Earthstorms’ on Netflix.
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