9.0 Earthquake strikes Japan

[JamieOber]

Hey everyone, doop dee doo, let's prove that these tsunamis are nothing but silly fun!: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_17595398?nclick_check=1

OH ****!!!!!!!!!!

[weatherwiz]

That's pretty crazy for this to have moved Japan's cost 8'' and shifted the Earth's axis by 4''...I know large earthquakes can do such things but it seems to me that 8'' and 4'' is fairly big (although I don't know what's considered small or large in this regard).

When they say the Earth shifted on it's axis by 4'' or they referring to the tilt of the Earth on it's axis? I know the Earth's tilt is usually anywhere between about 23 and 24 degrees (might even range from 22.5-24.5). With this shift of 4'' does this mean the Earth is tilting closer to the sun or is it tilting further away?

[Scuddz]

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/03/earthquake-in-japan/100022/

[thunderbolt]

per fox news 9500 missing in one town in japan

[sojitodd]

per fox news 9500 missing in one town in japan

Also on other news channels. They are saying 9,500 still unaccounted for in one town-with a population of only 17,000. Yikes...

I think this is going to be deadlier by far than Kobe unfortunately. Given how many towns and cities were hit, how much worse it was than people probably thought(tsunami-wise), how quickly the tsunamis got there, etc.-it is just not good at all.

[dan11295]

per BBC at 1040 GMT: "Japanese authorities say troops found between 300 and 400 bodies in the coastal city of Rikuzentakata, which was devastated by the tsunami - NHK."

I am afraid you can expect at a mininum those sort of casuality figures in other communities along the coast, including Minamisanriku (the city where the 9,500 were reported missing I suspect most of those people as sumply out of contact with other people). I am also concerned the fatality ratio could be higher at some of the smaller communities where it might be harder to get inland quicker.

[Hazey]

Not really surprising about the missing. I would be shocked if the death toll didn't hit 5 figures. Just the size of the damage are says that. Only a fool or Chad Myers would think that only 1000 people died in this.

[Ed Lizard]

Not really surprising about the missing. I would be shocked if the death toll didn't hit 5 figures. Just the size of the damage are says that. Only a fool or Chad Myers would think that only 1000 people died in this.

The best tsunami warning system in the world isn't much use if one is in apparently one of the few flat areas of Japan with not much high ground and only 10 or 15 minutes warning the tsunami is coming.

[Hazey]

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The best tsunami warning system in the world isn't much use if one is in apparently one of the few flat areas of Japan with not much high ground and only 10 or 15 minutes warning the tsunami is coming.<br />

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110% agreed. I was a worst case scenario in the worst location. I mean if all these people got out in 15mins, and we are talking 10's of thousands, which I highly doubt, where did they go?? The mountains? Need more evidence look at the road systems there. Single lane highways. No way your going to get 100,000 people out on those in 15 mins. This is gonna be bad as the days go on. No doubt in my mind and I wold say a large portions of the fatalities will have come from the tsunami and not the quake itself. Hope I'm wrong and in this case would be happy to eat crow but I doubt it sadly.

[Bostonseminole]

This is so sad, as a person who lived in Japan this is hard to watch.

[North Balti Zen]

Yeah, simple math/logic tells us that the numbers will be well into the thousands. Google earth shows several towns in the affected area with sizable populations (in the several thousands). Even with a well-trained populace, even if the uninjured all went right to their cars (assuming their cars were reachable and driveable following the quake) and immediately started heading inland, I am guessing roads would clog and slow down egress. Getting six miles in that short a time probably unlikely. Add in that the people probably did not guess that they needed to go further than six miles inland in spots to be safe if they were trying to flee, and it is hard to be anything but pessimistic about which direction the count of dead and missing is going to head in this.

Frankly, I cannot stand the "known dead" count that the websites/24 hours news types like to flog. That number is illusory and doesn't begin to convey the full picture in situations like this.

[RU848789]

Yeah, simple math/logic tells us that the numbers will be well into the thousands. Google earth shows several towns in the affected area with sizable populations (in the several thousands). Even with a well-trained populace, even if the uninjured all went right to their cars (assuming their cars were reachable and driveable following the quake) and immediately started heading inland, I am guessing roads would clog and slow down egress. Getting six miles in that short a time probably unlikely. Add in that the people probably did not guess that they needed to go further than six miles inland in spots to be safe if they were trying to flee, and it is hard to be anything but pessimistic about which direction the count of dead and missing is going to head in this.

Frankly, I cannot stand the "known dead" count that the websites/24 hours news types like to flog. That number is illusory and doesn't begin to convey the full picture in situations like this.

Yep, and add in one more complication - it's quite possible that the roads inland in these coastal areas were severely damaged or even impassable, due to damage from the earthquake, making fleeing by car even more difficult. I imagine the final death toll could approach 100,000. Just a horrific tragedy.

[jburns]

With this shift of 4'' does this mean the Earth is tilting closer to the sun or is it tilting further away?

Since the earth is basically round that might be a difficult question to answer.

[gymengineer]

According to this map, the shaking was generally strong but not violent-- and I noticed that in most of the videos, the shaking doesn't look especially severe. Like, you see stuff falling from shelves and things jiggling, but don't see furniture and large objects really getting tossed around. (If anyone has links to footage like that, let me know.) However, the shaking did last a very long time. (Part of the reason the shaking wasn't too violent on land is of course because the center was offshore.) I noticed the same thing with the tremendous Chilean quake earlier this year-- that the shaking covered a huge area and lasted long, but wasn't pushing the upper limits of the MM scale in terms of intensity, and the video footage I saw did not blow me away.

The Kobe Earthquake in 1995-- a much smaller event of 6.8-- seemed to produce much more violent shaking. The videos were wild. Same with the moderate-size but very violent Northridge Earthquake in California in 1994 (another 6.7 that covered a relatively small area but produced shaking up to Level IX - Violent).

This is a good illustration of how Richter magnitude does not equal the intensity of the shaking. These are two different things, although people often get them confused.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all-- just pointing out that, according to the USGS summary, the intensity at Concepcion, Chile, was IX, which is plenty high.

http://earthquake.us...10tfan/#summary

The lights go out in this video just as the shake intensity really starts to ramp up:

The shake maps sometimes don't match up with the summaries written later. I suppose that's because one type of map is automatically generated and the other is from human reports. For the Haiti earthquake, for example, the summary indicates "only" a VII intensity at Port Au Prince even though the maps indicate higher.

As for the Kobe quake, although there's no direct translation between the Japanese intensity scale and the MMI scale, that earthquake maxed out on the Japanese scale. I've seen a corresponding MMI rating of XI, but it's sketchy to nail down. It's definitely the most extreme shaking caught on video.

[famartin]

I have to agree, Chad Myers is an idiot. His "thousand fatalities" figure is just retarded. The death toll is likely into the tens of thousands. Given how densely populated Japan is, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being over 100,000.

[beneficii]

I have to agree, Chad Myers is an idiot. His "thousand fatalities" figure is just retarded. The death toll is likely into the tens of thousands. Given how densely populated Japan is, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being over 100,000.

Who's Chad Myers?

[dan11295]

One positive thing is that it appears that building damage from the earthquake itself, even in Sendai, is not that bad (i.e.not that many collapses) the vast majority of the damage and fatalities here will be from the tsunami,.

[famartin]

Who's Chad Myers?

One of the mets on CNN.

[famartin]

One positive thing is that it appears that building damage from the earthquake itself, even in Sendai, is not that bad (i.e.not that many collapses) the vast majority of the damage and fatalities here will be from the tsunami,.

Yes. The trains have started running in Tokyo again, which is good. Though I did hear there was a dam break which destroyed some homes, so its not completely tsunami.

[eyewall]

[weatherwiz]

Since the earth is basically round that might be a difficult question to answer.

Well we do know that the Earth goes through cycles where the northern hemisphere is tilted even closer to the sun (this is when the tilt is greater than the 23.5 degrees) and the northern hemisphere is tilted further away from the sun (the tilt is much less than 23.5 degrees).

This is why I was just wondering what exactly was meant by the 4'' shift in the earth's radius.

[hoosierwx]

I don't know if this has been posted already:

http://www.december212012.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10524&start=0&sid=8f5754efe246c7ae1ed77e11fa056a26

This guy was calling for a major quake on March 11, 2011, in January. Is this extreme luck or might there be something to this? According to him the position of the moon relative to the earth was the same in the 2004 quake. I don't know if I buy it or not, but it is interesting.

[jburns]

Well we do know that the Earth goes through cycles where the northern hemisphere is tilted even closer to the sun (this is when the tilt is greater than the 23.5 degrees) and the northern hemisphere is tilted further away from the sun (the tilt is much less than 23.5 degrees).

This is why I was just wondering what exactly was meant by the 4'' shift in the earth's radius.

I knew what you meant. The way you asked seemed funny to me. I think it was the "tilting closer to the sun" that hit my funny bone. Its all good.

[weatherwiz]

I knew what you meant. The way you asked seemed funny to me. I think it was the "tilting closer to the sun" that hit my funny bone. Its all good.

Yeah I didn't exactly word it the best way.

[HurricaneJosh]

I'm not disagreeing with you at all-- just pointing out that, according to the USGS summary, the intensity at Concepcion, Chile, was IX, which is plenty high.

http://earthquake.us...10tfan/#summary

The lights go out in this video just as the shake intensity really starts to ramp up:

The shake maps sometimes don't match up with the summaries written later. I suppose that's because one type of map is automatically generated and the other is from human reports. For the Haiti earthquake, for example, the summary indicates "only" a VII intensity at Port Au Prince even though the maps indicate higher.

As for the Kobe quake, although there's no direct translation between the Japanese intensity scale and the MMI scale, that earthquake maxed out on the Japanese scale. I've seen a corresponding MMI rating of XI, but it's sketchy to nail down. It's definitely the most extreme shaking caught on video.

Thanks for the response, and for posting this Chilean video. Agreed-- it looks violent just before the lights go out, and then when they flicker on for a second afterward. You can see stuff really flying. That's the kind of shaking I'm taking about. And I agree, IX is plenty high-- and it also illustrates my point-- that Richter magnitude and shaking intensity are not the same thing, as the much smaller Northridge Earthquake (6.7) produced shaking just as violent (Level IX) in L.A.

Re: Kobe-- yeah, that is the best quake video I've seen. I think the motion was amplified by the loose soil.

[ThePhotoGuy]

1712: Meanwhile the latest report from Kyodo news agency puts the official death toll at 687, with another 650 people missing. But it is not clear whether this figure includes between 200-300 bodies being transferred to Sendai city.

BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

[Dunkman]

I don't know if this has been posted already:

http://www.december2...ed77e11fa056a26

This guy was calling for a major quake on March 11, 2011, in January. Is this extreme luck or might there be something to this? According to him the position of the moon relative to the earth was the same in the 2004 quake. I don't know if I buy it or not, but it is interesting.

A few thoughts. First, the talk of the supermoon impacting earthquakes has certainly been discussed, including here days before the quake, so it's not that other people haven't speculated about this.

No offense, but that forum name really could not possibly make one more suspicious about its contents. I'm sure if I combed the web I could find someone who predicted just about any major destructive event. Stopped clock is right twice a day after all.

[Derecho!]

I don't know if this has been posted already:

http://www.december2...ed77e11fa056a26

This guy was calling for a major quake on March 11, 2011, in January. Is this extreme luck or might there be something to this? According to him the position of the moon relative to the earth was the same in the 2004 quake. I don't know if I buy it or not, but it is interesting.

1) An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typwriters will eventually type the works of Shakespeare. There are an infinite number of kooks on the Internet making crappy vague earthquake predictions; for any major quake, one of them will have been "right."

2) The moon position stuff is an absolute lie. Was a full moon in the 2004 quake, was first quarter moon for this one.

[HurricaneJosh]

Wow-- the power of it is just amazing. I don't think any of us have seen such graphic, up-close-and-personal footage of a tsunami's effects until this event.

[HIPPYVALLEY]

I don't know if this has been posted already:

http://www.december2...ed77e11fa056a26

This guy was calling for a major quake on March 11, 2011, in January. Is this extreme luck or might there be something to this? According to him the position of the moon relative to the earth was the same in the 2004 quake. I don't know if I buy it or not, but it is interesting.

Interesting. The planets are all in a constant, dynamic state of interaction influencing each other through gravitational fields and electromagnetic energy.

Astrology was once the science of observing and recording the celestial cycles to try to understand and predict their effects on the natural world.