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9.0 Earthquake strikes Japan


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Spent the past few minutes trying to get an idea of the extent of the tsunami effects.

This NPR blog has a link to a video showing villages being swept away in Miyako, which is 90 miles NE of Sendai. Another video link shows the the effects in Hachinohe including cars floating away 125 Mi NE of Sendai near the NE tip of the main island in Japan

Kesennuma is about 50 miles NE of Sendai along the NE coast and was impacted by the tsunami. It has a pop. of 70,000. Seen actual footage of the tsunami triggering fires as it pushed inland in other locations so they may be at least partially tsunami triggered

Sendai has a pop. of 1,000,000 and given the pop.size and proximity to the epicenter is likely where the most severe impacts are.

AP Report also mentions Onahama city in Fukushima prefecture as a location where video showed significant tsunami damage. This is 50 miles South of Sendai, So at least 175 miles of coastline likely suffered major damage from this event

From the Google maps there is a coastal road linking these communities is likely now unusable .

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Spend the past few minutes trying to get an idea of the extent of the tsunami effects.

This NPR blog has a link to a video showing villages being swept away in Miyako, which is 90 miles NE of Sendai. Another video link shows the the effects in Hachinohe including cars floating away 125 Mi NE of Sendai near the NE tip of the main island in Japan

Kesennuma is about 50 miles NE of Sendai along the NE coast and was impacted by the tsunami. It has a pop. of 70,000. Seen actual footage of the tsunami triggering fires as it pushed inland in other locations so they may be at least partially tsunami triggered

Sendai has a pop. of 1,000,000 and given the pop.size and proximity to the epicenter is likely where the most severe impacts are.

AP Report also mentions Onahama city in Fukushima prefecture as a location where video showed significant tsnunami damage. This is 50 miles South of Sendai, So at least 175 miles of coastline likely suffered major damage from this event

From the Google maps there is a coastal road linking these communities is likely now unusable .

Good info. Sadly, I think we're going to be even more shocked at some of the aftermath footage we start seeing this evening as the sun comes up over there.

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I would really like to know what the hell some people were doing so close to the Ocean. It's not like they haven't known for hours on end that it was coming..

They probably went down to watch it come in-falls into the same category as the surfers in Santa Cruz who wanted to RIDE it in. Remember what Einstein said-there are only two things that are infinite, the Universe and human stupidity and he wasn't sure about the Universe.

Steve

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I think OSUmetstud pretty much ended the discussion when he posted the definition of a tsunami warning vs. an advisory. To dumb it down, an advisory is dangerous to people in an near the water, and a warning means run up on land is expected. The differentiation between what happened in Hawai'i and what happened in Japan will be in the warning text. One will mention catastrophic waves imminent the other will not.

Another thing that factors into this is that we, as scientists, can't pretend like we know all when it comes to the current state of the science. It is the same reason we don't mess around with tornado warnings, we just aren't that good at predicting which ones produce and which ones don't. Until we do, change for change sake isn't the way to go.

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Knowing you from another forum and being on here for a year or so when it was eastern wx forum. I would have to say you should probably put your tail between your legs here, you are only digging yourself a hole. There are several members on here that are petroleum engineers, geologists and I'm sure maybe a semiologist or two. The point is, just because they don't have a red tag doesn't mean they do not have degrees in other fields and have knowledge far beyond that of a meteorologist when it comes to the earth sciences.

With that said, have you ever been around the ocean for a long period of time? If you have, you would know that even 6 ft. waves are extremely strong and can toss you around like a rag doll and unsuspecting beach goers could easily be swept out to sea and drown.

So your Tsunami advisory for a "small" wave can easily turn into 4 or 5 people drowning since they had an "advisory" and didn't listen to the advisory and leave the beach and I would consider that lose of life catastrophic

Anyways, welcome to the board!

Good info QV.. figured I'd eventually come across a few from the other boards :) I definitely don't think of myself as any better because of the red tag.. just thought that would put me in a more likely category of people who have directly dealt with people who don't heed warnings and the high level of frustration that accompanies that... that's all. Maybe it's just too early to bring this stuff up... just looking at the video/damage I've seen, it didn't look horrible in HI/US (and by US I mean CONUS coast),.. maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the warnings saved tons of lives. If that's the case then I'm on board for the warnings and I spoke too soon.

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2043: The 6.7-magnitude earthquake which struck Niigata prefecture at 0400 on Saturday (1900 GMT on Friday) caused landslides and avalanches, police have said. The Kyodo news agency said there were no immediate reports of casualties after the tremor, which was followed by an almost equally strong one in the same area about 45 minutes later. The quakes struck in the west of the main island of Honshu, on the Sea of Japan coast.

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Good info QV.. figured I'd eventually come across a few from the other boards :) I definitely don't think of myself as any better because of the red tag.. just thought that would put me in a more likely category of people who have directly dealt with people who don't heed warnings and the high level of frustration that accompanies that... that's all. Maybe it's just too early to bring this stuff up... just looking at the video/damage I've seen, it didn't look horrible in HI/US (and by US I mean CONUS coast),.. maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the warnings saved tons of lives. If that's the case then I'm on board for the warnings and I spoke too soon.

Its been said in numerous reports across all news outlets that the warnings did indeed save lives.

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Spent the past few minutes trying to get an idea of the extent of the tsunami effects.

This NPR blog has a link to a video showing villages being swept away in Miyako, which is 90 miles NE of Sendai. Another video link shows the the effects in Hachinohe including cars floating away 125 Mi NE of Sendai near the NE tip of the main island in Japan

Kesennuma is about 50 miles NE of Sendai along the NE coast and was impacted by the tsunami. It has a pop. of 70,000. Seen actual footage of the tsunami triggering fires as it pushed inland in other locations so they may be at least partially tsunami triggered

Sendai has a pop. of 1,000,000 and given the pop.size and proximity to the epicenter is likely where the most severe impacts are.

AP Report also mentions Onahama city in Fukushima prefecture as a location where video showed significant tsunami damage. This is 50 miles South of Sendai, So at least 175 miles of coastline likely suffered major damage from this event

From the Google maps there is a coastal road linking these communities is likely now unusable .

Some horrific numbers are going to start coming out later.

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2030: The US Coast Guard helicopters are searching for a man who was swept out to sea by powerful waves generated by the tsunami in Northern California, the Associated Press reports. Officials say the man was taking photos of the tsunami with two friends near the mouth of the Klamath river in Del Norte County. The two friends were able to get back to shore.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...e-east-12307698

Darwin award winner.

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agree for the most part....someone should give chad myers a few xanax and a bottle of preseco

on the other hand, growing up i had to get up off the couch to change the channel (to one of the other 3 available channels)....now, i sit at my desk watching people on the other side of world being swept to their deaths by a natural disaster, live and in color, while tracking usgs analysis on the net in real time....

horrifying and amazing at the same time.

I love how he is an "expert" on earthquakes and tsunamis now too! But taking just a few classes in geology I have found 2 of 2 of his explainations of tsumanis and there causes extremely flawed basics. He couldn't even explain that Japan is on the western side of a subduction zone and the quakes are occuring along the subduction zone. He kept saying it's on a fault. Which as I recall definition wise you can call a subduction zone a fault but subduction zone is the perferred wording. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

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2051: The official death toll from Friday's earthquake has risen to 184, Japanese police tell the Kyodo news agency. However, police in the city of Sendai have said separately that between 200 and 300 bodies have been found on the beach there. Kyodo estimates that more than 1,000 people have been killed.

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Would a 6 foot tsunami surge be considered equivalent to a Cat 2 hurricane storm surge, Steve?

As far as the inland runup yes with one exception-tsunami surges move much faster hence have more force as can be seen in the videos from Japan. The main difference is that storm surges usually have breaking waves with them .

Steve

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again, your personal opinion is irrelevant. as coastalwx explained, the difference between a warning and an advisory is whether the wave comes inland. the fact you make arbitrary associations with the word "warning" isn't meaningful in a real world context.

That may have been Cacotinwx. :)

Edit: or OSUmetstud. Doesn't matter, just giving credit where credit is due.

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Not sure what prompted the geography lesson at the end but I appreciate it anyways! And although I feel for the family of the person who lost his life, if he was aware of a tsunami warning and decided to watch it in... some people will always be too dumb to reach. That's part of the sad reality of forecasting weather for the public.

Is it really that crazy of an idea to try and make some sort of distinction in warnings between what happened in Japan and what happened in HI?

With all due respect, "wxtrix" I don't think you've had to deal with the frustration of people who don't heed warnings. It's easy to sit on a high horse on an internet forum and say " better safe than sorry, issue the warning" but the reality is that if you do this enough, more people will end up hurt in the end*

*(in my opinion, open for discussion) see how a discussion board works?

Well, the details of the Tsunami Warning clearly explained the destinction in the impending situation for HI and the West Coast from what happened in Japan, with wave heights expected and what not. What else do you want them to do?? Change the title?? A " Less than what happened in Japan Tsunami Warning" has been issued for California...lol

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I think OSUmetstud pretty much ended the discussion when he posted the definition of a tsunami warning vs. an advisory. To dumb it down, an advisory is dangerous to people in an near the water, and a warning means run up on land is expected. The differentiation between what happened in Hawai'i and what happened in Japan will be in the warning text. One will mention catastrophic waves imminent the other will not.

Another thing that factors into this is that we, as scientists, can't pretend like we know all when it comes to the current state of the science. It is the same reason we don't mess around with tornado warnings, we just aren't that good at predicting which ones produce and which ones don't. Until we do, change for change sake isn't the way to go.

I suppose you could try to differentiate warnings into "moderate, major, etc," much like they do with river stages, but I'm not sure the science is good enough to take a risk of something bigger happening than forecasted. Even then, they are all flood warnings, with a subtext of the type of flooding expected. Like you say with tornado warnings, I believe less than 25% of tornado warnings result in a tornado, but our understanding of tornadogenesis is limited enough to err on the side of caution.

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If I want news, I'll go to a news site. A message board is for discussions.

One of the best things about these types of threads is the rapid sharing of breaking news and information from a variety of sources by different posters. It condenses a lot of meaningful information into one place at a rapid pace, something you aren't going to get by visiting one or two main news outlet sites.

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Good info QV.. figured I'd eventually come across a few from the other boards :) I definitely don't think of myself as any better because of the red tag.. just thought that would put me in a more likely category of people who have directly dealt with people who don't heed warnings and the high level of frustration that accompanies that... that's all. Maybe it's just too early to bring this stuff up... just looking at the video/damage I've seen, it didn't look horrible in HI/US (and by US I mean CONUS coast),.. maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the warnings saved tons of lives. If that's the case then I'm on board for the warnings and I spoke too soon.

Wait a few weeks until severe wx season gets going. You will have plenty of debate about watch warning etc.

I'm pretty sure the warning saved lives. I have lived in Indonesia for the past 4 months surfing (visited Kho Phi Phi...devistated by the 2004 tsunami) and being around southern california surfing in just this short amount of time and I can tell you one thing from experience is NEVER under estimate the power of water. Just because a 4 or 5 foot wave doesn't destroy man built structures it doesn't mean it won't drag you out to sea, toss you around like a rag doll, pull you under water, slam you into rocks or bend you in to shapes you never imagined. Remember the flood warning info, only a foot of water or something like that can move an entire car off a road. Ppl on a beach, espeically childern can easily be swept out to sea especially if it's 5 feet above high tide marks. Which this one was at low tide from what I hear.

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