Small Tsunami Hits Japan. Aleutions (AK) Get 1 ft. wave. Ok Nevermind.

A SMALL tsunami wave hit Japan's northernmost island today after a powerful north Pacific earthquake prompted tsunami warnings for northern Japan, Russia and a wide swathe of Japan's Pacific coast.
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A 10-cm wave was reported at Nemuro, on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, a little after 3pm local time NHK public television said. Officials said several harbour waters had drawn back slightly in what could be a precursor to a wave.

(10 cm would be 4 inches. The question is "How could they tell?')

There were no reports of injury or damage, or more significant waves, as of 3.45pm, but officials warned that larger waves could still arrive and evacuation advisories were issued for thousands of households.

Japan's Meteorological Agency said that tsunami of as much as a metre in height could strike parts of Hokkaido and that smaller waves were likely to hit a large part of Japan's Pacific coastal areas from Hokkaido to Wakayama prefecture in western Japan on the largest main island of Honshu.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) put the quake magnitude at 7.9, a "major" tremor, and said its epicentre was 525 km  east northeast of Kuril'sk, Kurile islands, and 1710 km northeast of Tokyo.

The same area was struck by a powerful quake in November, prompting evacuations and tsunami warnings, but in the end only small waves - the highest 40 cm - reached Japan.

An official in the Philippines said they had issued a tsunami alert "level one", which warned residents on the northern and eastern coastlines to wait for further information and possible evacuation.

A tsunami, Japanese for "harbour wave," travels at dizzying speed in the open ocean and, when it approaches shallow water along a coast, slows and swells. In an inlet, it can rise to a towering height very quickly.

In 1993, a tsunami caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed about 200 people on the island of Okushiri, off Hokkaido's southwestern coast.

A wave measured around 1 foot rolled onto the shores of Shemya, near the western tip of the Aleutians, about 9:30 p.m., according to the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center. Japan's coastline also saw small waves coming ashore, almost all of them less than a foot.

The 27 people on Shemya, a former military base, took refuge in an underground shelter after the warning was issued, as did residents in nearby Attu.

"Indications are that a tsunami was generated but small in nature," said weather service spokesman Greg Romano.

tags: tsunami  tidal wave  earthquake  japan  california  

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