Japan Earthquake & Tsunami News

March 11 quake was 20x longer and 1,450 x larger than one that destroyed Kobe

The below image was captured from an excellent English-language NHK documentary that provides a wealth of information on the history of tsunamis in northeastern Japan and demonstrates how this was a once-in-a-millennium disaster of gargantuan proportions. The pic shows two seismic waves. The bottom one represents the destructive earthquake that hit Kobe in the mid 90's and killed around 6,000 people. It was a 7 magnitude quake that lasted 15 seconds. Compare that to the one above which was recorded during Friday's quake, which lasted a whopping FIVE MINUTES and threw off much larger amplitude waves (click to see a larger version).

Here is a 15-minute segment from the aforementioned documentary that I found on YouTube. It's well worth watching.

 

Japan tsunami reached far inland

NHK just reported that the tsunami that hit the Sendai area of Japan rolled more than 5 kilometers (3+ miles) inland.

Officials revise magnitude of earthquake to 9

According to Asahi News, officials at Japan's Meteorological Agency have revised the magnitude of Friday's quake upward from 8.8 to 9. This essentially means the quake was twice as strong as originally believed. Just to put a magnitude 9 in perspective, that's 1,450 times larger than the monster that destroyed Kobe in 1995. The quake now ranks as the fourth largest ever recorded.

Japan suffers over 50 quakes of magnitude 3 or more since this morning

I just took a quick peek at the numbers listed on the Japan Meteorological website and counted more than 50 earthquakes today scoring 3 or more on the Japanese seismic scale. To see for yourself, click here.

Continuously revised data can be accessed anytime from the link shown under "Quake/Tsunami Data & Stats" in the right-most column of this page.