The article reads to me like the 4.5 km wave was an initial "splash" which dissipated but the actual tsunami was "only" 1.5 km high. Imagine throwing a good siz

The article reads to me like the 4.5 km wave was an initial "splash" which dissipated but the actual tsunami was "only" 1.5 km high. Imagine throwing a good sized rock into a pond: Big initial splash, then smaller waves radiate out. Of course, to observe the proper effect, you would need to throw your rock at 20 km/s into shallow water. > a curtain of ejected material pushed a wall of water outward from the impact site, briefly forming a 4.5 kilometers high (2.8 miles) wave that subsided as the ejecta fell back to Earth. Ten minutes after the projectile hit the Yucatan, and 220 kilometers (137 miles) from the point of impact, a 1.5 kilometers high (0.93 miles) tsunami wave—ring-shaped and outward-propagating—began sweeping across the ocean in all directions