8.9 Earthquake has struck Japan

The weather channel reports that 200-300 bodies have already been found.
 
This may have been posted already as I didn't really take time to look and go over all posts but there was not just 2 quakes leading up to the big one....there were a number of them before the big one (8.9) and have been a total 63 total. YES THAT NUMBER IS CORRECT! Of course some of these were after shocks as well but the majority of them 5.5 to a magnitude of 7.9.
Per the Quake Feed it looks like the first one was 7.9, the second one a 7.9 and then the 8.9 followed by 60 "after shocks" ranging from 5.4 to 7.9 starting near 11:46CDT going through 8:10amCDT this morning.
 
Lanny Dean said:
This may have been posted already as I didn't really take time to look and go over all posts but there was not just 2 quakes leading up to the big one....there were a number of them before the big one (8.9) and have been a total 63 total. YES THAT NUMBER IS CORRECT! Of course some of these were after shocks as well but the majority of them 5.5 to a magnitude of 7.9.
Per the Quake Feed it looks like the first one was 7.9, the second one a 7.9 and then the 8.9 followed by 60 "after shocks" ranging from 5.4 to 7.9 starting near 11:46CDT going through 8:10amCDT this morning.
Click to expand...

A major earthquake event like this will have hundreds of thousands of aftershocks. 5.0+ aftershocks may last for many days.

It has to be gut wrenching to know you will be experiencing potentially damaging aftershocks for some time.

Imagine having an EF-5 go though then having a series of EF-1 to EF-3 tornadoes go through for days on end after :(
 
Thats just down right scary. We are about 20-30 mins away from landfall on the west coast.

BTW 20 mile depth is extremely deep. We are probably looking at 20,000 to 50,000 casualties. :(
 
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The worst problem was that the quake was very close to the coast, meaning only a 10 minute or so gap between the shaking and the tsunami. Enough for people to flee if they dropped what they were doing, but the first impulse during an earthquake may be to stay inside until the shaking has completely stopped... and this was a very long earthquake.

The water surge went around six miles inland. This would translate into several hundred square miles of relatively densely populated land completely obliterated.

There is currently a massive fire going on near the tsunami impact zone that covers around 4 and a half square miles.

Japan news sources report that a large ship carrying 100 passengers was swept away and is missing; some passenger trains running along the coast are also unnacounted for.

BBC reports that AFP is flashing that a dam has just burst in northeastern Japan; can't find any info online about it yet.
 
Interestingly, from the videos of the actual quake now coming out, the shaking doesn't appear to be as violent as the 1995 Kobe event. Of course I don't know how far from the fault movement these videos are, obviously more distant spots wouldn't show as much shaking. With Kobe, the epicenter was both shallow and directly under the populated area. The Kobe footage showed rapid high-amplitude ground movement (pushing large file cabinets several feet across the room, etc).

Here is a clip from 1995 Kobe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0plbf5w0sbA
 
Most of the quake footage videos out right now are from Tokyo...200+ miles away.

Looking at my USGS emails there were quakes off Honshu back on the 9th. As a geologist said on tv this morning, the problem with foreshocks is that you never know they are foreshocks until it is too late.
 
West Coast seeing tsunami amplitude up to 5 feet or so:

http://forecast.weather.gov/showsig...es+SSE+Emeryville+CA&product1=Tsunami+Warning

MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI ACTIVITY

LOCATION LAT LON TIME AMPL
------------------------ ----- ------ ------- -----------
SHEMYA AK 52.7N 174.1E 1130UTC 05.1FT/01.56M
ADAK AK 51.9N 176.6W 1443UTC 03.4FT/01.04M
MIDWAY IS. USA 28.2N 177.4W 1044UTC 05.1FT/01.55M
WAKE IS. USA 19.3N 166.6E 0918UTC 01.7FT/00.52M
DUTCH HARBOR AK 53.9N 166.5W 1414UTC 01.7FT/00.51M
NAHA JAPAN 26.2N 127.7E 1022UTC 01.6FT/00.49M
NIKOLSKI AK 52.9N 168.9W 1341UTC 01.9FT/00.58M
FRENCH FRIGATE SHOALS 23.5N 166.2W 1334UTC 01.8FT/00.56M
ST PAUL IS. AK 57.1N 170.3W 1225UTC 02.0FT/00.61M
SAND POINT AK 55.3N 160.5W 1459UTC 01.2FT/00.38M
NAWILIWILI KAUAI HI 22.0N 159.4W 1344UTC 02.5FT/00.76M
BARBERS POINT HI 21.5N 158.0W 1312UTC 02.3FT/00.70M
HONOLULU OAHU HI 21.3N 157.9W 1316UTC 02.3FT/00.71M
KAHULUI MAUI HI 20.9N 156.5W 1331UTC 05.7FT/01.74M
HILO HI 19.7N 155.1W 1413UTC 04.6FT/01.41M
KING COVE AK 55.1N 162.3W 1512UTC 02.1FT/00.64M
LANGARA POINT BC 54.2N 133.1W 1403UTC 00.8FT/00.23M
 
NWS service reporting boat/dock damage in Santa Cruz.

City of Kesennuma in Japan seems to have been devastated. Tsumami and fire. Both a cruise ship and a high speed bullet train are missing.

It is interesting to me that two days ago, a mag. 7.2 quake in the same area went almost unnoticed. It was the start of 19 quakes of mag 5 or greater in the same area over the next 51 hours or so leading up to the 8.9 mag quake. Since then, there have been 84 aftershocks of mag 5 or greater, as I type this.
 
Mike Deep said:
The AP is circulating a model-generated wave height map from the PTWC, but their stubborn habit of only offering images in stupidly small sizes prevents me from actually reading it. Does anyone have a link to this?
Click to expand...

Let's see if this image auto-resizes -- from the WCATWC:
energylhvpd9-04.jpg


From the NOAA NNVL:
680_20110311-TsunamiWaveHeight.jpg
 
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