"Tidal wave" is a commonly misused term. People often use it to mean a tsunami. But a tidal wave is something quite ordinary, and something that happens every day: the tide.
The NOAA San Francisco Tide Station, in operation for more than 150 years. Credit: NOAA.
What a tidal wave really is
A tidal wave is a regularly recurring shallow-water wave, caused by the gravitational interactions of the sun, the moon and the Earth on the ocean. Its rise and fall plays an important role in the natural world, and it has a marked effect on everything people do at sea. (For why that wave does not simply follow the moon around the planet, see High Tide Does Not Follow the Moon Overhead.)
Why a tsunami is not one
Calling a tsunami a "tidal wave" is incorrect, because tsunamis have nothing to do with tides.
Sources
Based on "What is a tidal wave?" from NOAA's National Ocean Service, a work of the United States government in the public domain.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from oceanservice.noaa.gov
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