TSUNAMI!

When I announced to my parents that I had accepted the job out here in coastal Washington, my father, in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to talk me out of it, said: "There's gonna be a tsunami that's gonna wash right up that Columbia River, and you're gonna drown, honey. But I love you and want you to be happy ..."

Thanks, Dad.

That's not going to happen. Our city has been specificallyn named tonight by area experts as being "immune" to the tsunami that is NOT going to surge up the Columbia River.

But.

When I got out here and drove to the coast the first time, I giggled at the sight of the "Tsunami Evacuation Route (this way)" signs. It just seemed like such a foreign concept to me, that I could live so near a tsunami evacuation route.

And now tonight, I'm the one calling our photographer in Astoria, waking him up to tell him to either get a spectacular photo from way up high on a hill, or to get the hell away from the coast. Because we're under some alternating form of a tsunami warning and a tsunami advisory.

Not to be macabre, but ... as a coworker said tonight: "It's nights like this when it's exciting to do what we do ..."

This was the first red-banner warning that came across for our region: