Tsunamis
At 7:10 this morning
(Bloomington time), a large earthquake occurred off the coast of the Kurile Islands in Japan. The immediate result was a tsunami or tidal wave 6-8 feet high. A Tsunami alert has been issued for the Pacific Ocean.
The earthquake was 8.1 in magnitude and occurred about 250 miles east of the island of Etorofu.
What is a tsunami?
How will this one evolve?
The tsunami will pick up speed and wave height with time and move across the Pacific Ocean much like the ripples in a pond when you throw a rock into it. The first waves tend to be fairly small.
Will Hawaii or Alaska be threatened? Probably not, at least on the scale of the Indonesian tsunami of 2004. The magnitude depends on the amount of water displaced by the earthquake movement. One of the largest tsunamis in history occurred due to the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa, off the coast of Java, Indonesia. so much rock material moved into the ocean, so fast that a tsunami occurred. The eruption was so violent it was like a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
Just two years ago the third most deadly tsunami in history occurred in Indonesia off the coast of Sumatra. More than 21,000 people were killed and nearly 10 million were left homeless. Click the link below to see an animation of the tsunami.
Here are some images of the Tsunami in 2004 in southeast Asia
Bandar Aceh, Indonesia Before and After
Sri Lanka Before and After
Click the link below to see a virtual reality panorama of one of the devastated areas.
