they are reporting that the tsunami moved water 3 miles in. it would be very difficult to move large numbers of people out of the way of that even with a 20-30 minute head start on the wave.
crescent city is reporting one person missing.
cnn just reported 4 trains are missing. 4 trains, good heavens…
A Darwin Award nominee.
Yes, a 6 is a pretty darn good shake. The last quake I was in was a 4.6 and it was enough to startle me and push things off the shelves. I was in a post-earthquake-upgrades-to-the-building-codes house in Southern California at the time. For comparison, the Loma Prieta earthquake that shook down the Bay bridge was a 6.9.
The Richter magnitude scaleused to describe earthquakes calls an 8.9 quake a “great” quake. I can’t imagine how frightening it must have been.
Was this 8.9 on the Richter scale or the Moment Magnitude Scale?
Yes, the news here (San Fran) os reporting one death in Crescent City. I live about a quarter mile from Ocean Beach, right where the tsunami would have a field day (we have “tsunami escape route” signs on our street), and it was pretty much a non-starter. Surges approximating high tide.
ETA : They reported 8-foot waves in Crescent City. Couldn’t’ve been more than 18 inches in SF.
Joe
If you look at the habor at Crescent City you can see how a big wave would cause damage there, due to its shape
That’s good. I have friends there that I’m worried about. One in Seattle too.
All the tsunami evacuation routes in the areas I’ve been that were affected by the Indian Ocean one don’t seek to move large numbers of people away from the shoreline - just up the nearest hill. Of course the nearest hill may be a long way inland, looking at the images of Japan, but not always.
Moment magnitude. All earthquakes over 7.0 in intensity (the two scales are roughly equal at that magnitude) are measure by moment magnitude, which is better suited for the much larger energy releases at that intensity.
That’s what I figured. I haven’t heard anyone use the Richter scale for a major earthquake in a long while and did not know which was being referred to.
poking around the web has the quake hitting at 2:46 jst and the sendai airport being hit by the water at 3:55 jst.
there are about 1 million people in the city. the water moved 10km into the city from the coast. the tsunami alert was issued immediatly.
Not much danger here - though most people are smart enough to stay away from the water. Here is the KCBS summary including video of a boat sinking in Santa Cruz harbor. When I was driving to work about 8:30 am local time they were reporting that chunks of some piers were being torn away.
Luckily for us, the tide was out when the tsunami hit which helped a lot. However the dreadful nature of the quake is obvious considering its power 6,000 miles away.
By the way, does anyone know what this earthquake would read on the Richter scale? I’m curious, now.
That’s good to know. But yeah, that’s a lot of power!
National Geographic estimates the energy released by the 9.2 Indian Ocean earthquake to be equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima bombs, though other estimates have gone up to 80,000 times greater than Hiroshima. I don’t know enough about moment magnitude to know how that translates into the amount of energy released by an 8.8 quake - or if they’re are other factors that increase or decrease it. But when a tsunami of such a scale makes landfall, it is merely a transference of a tiny proportion of that energy.
Did I really hear a geologist on NPR saying that they estimate as much as 50 feet of sudden plate movement? That’s incredible.
Pity a lot of people are still fucking morons. From the New York Post site:
Wow to both posts.
They’re no better on CNN. One of their vapid talking heads gave this brilliant bit this morning:
“…which is 400 kilometers from the epicenter. That’s nearly fifty miles.”
Yeah, you’re only off by about 200 miles.
And nothing new on Auto’s facebook.
It really depends on how much distance was deep water and how much was shallow water between the epicenter and the coast.
Speed = sqaure root of (g*d), where g is the gravity constant 9.81m/s(squared) and d is depth of ocean.
Probably the best explanation of tsunami speed that I have seen.
Warning: Multiple physics equations ahead.