Warning Includes Alaska, California and Oregon
TMV Live Blogging on the earthquake and tsunami
** 8.30 am Pacific
Waves should begin hitting the UW mainland. Waves with an amplitude of at least six feet (1.82 meters) hit Maui earlier this morning. Hawaii remains under tsunami warning.
** 1.29 am Pacific
At 07:30 UTC (11.30 PST) the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a “widespread tsunami warning” for the Pacific rim. Hawaii was placed under a warning at 10.30 pm HST. According to reports from Al Jazerra English, parts of the Hawaiian Islands are being evacuated, and the estimated arrival time is 03.07 AM HST.
At 12:51AM PST Friday, the NOAA West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center confirmed a warning for California and Oregon from Point Concepcion, California to the Oregon-Washington border. The warning also includes Alaska from Amchitka Pass, Alaska (125 miles W of Adak) to Attu, Alaska.
There is an advisory for Washington, British Columbia and Alaska from the Oregon-Washington border to Amchitka Pass, Alaska (125 miles W of Adak).
A warning means that people should immediately move away from the beach or other low-lying regions to higher ground that is inland and away from all harbors and inlets. In other words, a warning means, “it’s coming.”
An advisory “means that a tsunami capable of producing strong currents or waves dangerous to persons in or very near the water is expected.”
The term “tsunami warning” does not mean the same thing that it does with a hurricane, it is more analogous to a hurricane “watch” with the really big difference of time: 24-36 hours with a hurricane, 2-6 with a tsunami.
The tsunami resulted from the devastating earthquake that hit Japan early Friday morning. A tsunami is a series of long ocean waves with unpredictable wave heights, “generated by sudden displacement of the seafloor or disruption of any body of standing water.” Tsunami waves have a short wave height relative to their length, which can be hundreds of miles long.
Note to NOAA: put a byline, URL and date on images like this one. They escape into the wild, without attribution.
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