Nonhydrodynamic initial conditions are not soon forgotten.

Solutions to hydrodynamic equations, which are used for a vast variety of physical problems, are assumed to be specified by boundary conditions and initial conditions on the hydrodynamic variables only. Initial values of other variables are assumed to be irrelevant for a hydrodynamic description. We show that this assumption is not correct because of the existence of long-time-tail effects that are ubiquitous in systems governed by hydrodynamic equations. We illustrate this breakdown of a hydrodynamic description by means of the simple example of diffusion in a disordered electron system.