Tsunami Warnings

[MatthewCarman]

Was not sure where to put this but I saw for the whole western seaboard a sunami warning. Can somebody please tell me if they are expecting a bad Sunami to hit the US? Also what would be the cause of the Sunami?

 

[Robert Dewey]

The warning says that a "tsunami" may have been generated, but they don't know for sure. They err on the side of caution, and since it's getting towards night, I doubt there will be many people on the beach.

 

[Bill Hamilton]

Earthquakes are the main cause for concern that would produce a major TSUNAMI.
http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/tsunami/links.html

 

[Chris Foltz]

Might want to read it again. The only area of the US that's under a Tsunami warning is up in Alaska. It states clearly that no area south of Vancouver Island, BC is under a Tsunami watch or warning at this time.

...TSUNAMI ADVISORY STATEMENT...
NO - REPEAT NO - WATCH OR WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE
COASTAL AREAS FROM THE CALIFORNIA-MEXICO BORDER TO THE
NORTH TIP OF VANCOUVER I., BRITISH COLUMBIA

 

[Chris Allington]

The preliminary warning data is showing that a magnitude 8.2 earthquake occured about 14 miles in depth, north and east of the Kuril Islands...

 

[Angie Norris]

That's been a quite active area recently. Not sure if it would be considered an aftershock of the 8.3 that occurred there on 11-15-06 or if it's a whole new event.

 

[John MacKay]

It was marked as a Tsunami warning on the San Diego NWS map until that statement came out that basically cancelled it.

 

[Paul Austin]

Earthquakes are the main cause for concern that would produce a major TSUNAMI.

And don't forget subsea landslides - anything that displaces a large volume of water within a very short time frame.

 

[Steve Burrows]

Warnings have now been lifted, I guess its better to put them out till they get a better idea of whats going on.

 

[B Ozanne]

And don't forget subsea landslides - anything that displaces a large volume of water within a very short time frame.

A landslide big enough to create a tsunami would easily register on the world's earthquake monitoring network...hence it would initially be considered an earthquake.

Since the 2004 tsunami, tsunami warnings have become much more prevelant. All of them have luckily been false warnings or the tsunami was only a few inches
high.

Edit: I just came across these reports:

GAUGE LOCATION LAT LON TIME AMPL PER
------------------- ----- ------ ----- ------ -----
WAKE US 19.3N 166.6E 0837Z 0.09M 10MIN
MIDWAY 28.2N 177.4W 0911Z 0.18M 10MIN
HILO HAWAII 19.7N 155.1W 1148Z 0.12M 14MIN
KAHULUI MAUI 20.9N 156.5W 1126Z 0.14M 16MIN
NAWILIWILI KAUAI 22.0N 159.4W 1208Z 0.09M 10MIN
ADAK AK 51.9N 176.6W 0831Z 0.04M 18MIN
DART NW PAC 21414 48.9N 178.3E 0735Z 0.03M 08MIN
SHEMYA AK 52.7N 174.1E 0712Z 0.32M 06MIN
HANASAKI HOKKAIDO 43.3N 145.6E 0605Z 0.10M 28MIN

Looks like the biggest rise was around a foot. I'm guessing near the earthquake center rises would have been much greater, but this
a very remote region in the world.

 

[rdale]

It was marked as a Tsunami warning on the San Diego NWS map until that statement came out that basically cancelled it.

There was an admin note that came across the weatherwire saying the web people were made aware of a decoding issue for the Tsunami Warning...

 

[Jordan Hartley]

Hey here is a good link to the USGS website. Well have all the data on any earthquake activity anywhere in the world over the last 7 days and then keeps an archive.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/

 

[B Ozanne]

I'm on the USGS mailing list for earthquakes. It's pretty cool. You get an email for any earthquake over 5.0 around the World and over 4.0 in the United States. It's almost instaneous too, you get the email within a few minutes of the quake.

 

[Angie Norris]

I'm on the USGS mailing list for earthquakes. It's pretty cool. You get an email for any earthquake over 5.0 around the World and over 4.0 in the United States. It's almost instaneous too, you get the email within a few minutes of the quake.

Sweet!! How does one sign up for this?

 

[B Ozanne]

Sweet!! How does one sign up for this?

http://quake.usgs.gov/recent/eqlist.html