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Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued

346 points by lattis

by pezezin

1 subcomments

I live in Misawa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misawa,_Aomori) and work in Rokkasho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokkasho), which is the area where the earthquake hit the strongest. It was quite violent, apparently the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the region. My house suffered no damage other than a few things falling off the cabinets, and I could sleep soundly afterwards, but lets see today at work.

by intunderflow

5 subcomments

Was in a hotel in Sapporo, almost got thrown out of bed. Lot of people in the hotel lobby now.
Considering leaving Hokkaido by air if a Hokkaido and Sanriku Subsequent Earthquake Advisory is issued, don't really want to be in a potential megaquake.

by uyzstvqs

0 subcomment

Official map with wave observations: https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#5/33.909/141.192/&conte...
0.7m observed about 40 minutes ago.

by throwup238

3 subcomments

This would be the tenth major earthquake (7+ magnitude) along the Pacific ring of fire this year.
With the Kamchatka and other earthquakes in the news recently I had a fear that were building to some major event but turns out that this year is about average if not slightly below average for major quakes along the ring of fire.

by lagniappe

1 subcomments

Somewhat offtopic curiosity: Is there anything that Japanese fishkeepers do to keep the water and livestock inside the tank during earthquakes? Here we have no such risk for earthquakes, so a 600lb tank of water 4ft off the ground isn't much of an issue, even when bumped. I'd imagine earthquakes of this frequency could complicate that.

by tkgally

0 subcomment

About 20 hours after the earthquake, the University of Tokyo sent out a follow-up advisory to faculty, students, and staff [1, scroll down for English]. This part hit home with me:
“The ‘follow-up earthquake advisory for the Hokkaido and Sanriku Coastal regions’ was established following the earthquake (M7.3) that occurred off the coast of Sanriku on March 9, 2011, two days prior to the Great East Japan Earthquake (Tōhoku Region Pacific Offshore Earthquake) that occurred on March 11, 2011.”
I was eating lunch in a fourth-floor restaurant in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, on March 9, 2011, when that preliminary tremor occurred. I had felt many earthquakes before, but that one seemed different: longer, slower, creepier. It didn’t cause any damage, but I often recalled it after the much bigger one struck two days later. (I missed the March 11 quake, as I happened to leave for Osaka just a few hours before it hit. My office back in Tokyo was damaged, though.)
[1] https://kankyoanzen.adm.u-tokyo.ac.jp/%e5%8c%97%e6%b5%b7%e9%...

by octaane

2 subcomments

https://www.tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2025/12/08/25342050/2/WEPA40
Shouldn't be too bad; USGS forecasts up to 1 meter tsunami.

by qwertox

3 subcomments

Today I got served this video "Earthquake and Liquefaction his Urayasu, Chiba 3/11/2011" [0], which is from the earthquake which caused the huge tsunami in Japan.
I have rarely seen something as scary as this.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGblnPeOXJg

by linhns

2 subcomments

Epicentre very deep underground, so shouldn’t be dangerous aside from small tsunamis.

by tetris11

3 subcomments

NHK (english): https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20251209_02/
> The Japanese government set up a task force at the crisis management center in the prime minister's office at 11:16 p.m. on Monday in response to the earthquake.
A thousand Naruto shadow-clones just got deployed. I'm not being cute, these guys are heroes and role-models to all.

by kachapopopow

4 subcomments

When I was in japan the earthquakes were oddly exciting rather than scary, had three different ones while I was there that visibly shook rather heavy objects around. Two being in a building and one outside.
It was rather interesting seeing things shift around leaving a permanent imprint that there was in-fact an earthquake and it wasn't some kind of illusion when earthquakes these size couple of decades ago would cause non zero amount of damage.
Although, I am scared for tokyo about the predicted earthquake that would push all these systems near the breaking point and even beyond it, but hopefully the past in not prediction of the feature and instead it'll just be a lot of smaller earthquakes.

by rdl

1 subcomments

I’m in Niseko (Hokkaido) and had just driven 2.5h through a snowstorm to my hotel, opened door, and put down bags and phone. Weird alarm from my phone (new phone; forgot to disable, which I usually do because where I live abuses the system for a bunch of stupid alerts for chronic issues), looked at it, realized in Japan it is probably real, so I stood in a doorway. Pretty decent sized storm.
If a tsunami affects me on a mountain something would be seriously wrong, so I’m not going to worry.

by netcraft

1 subcomments

better link: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000rtdt...

by baden1927

0 subcomment

USGS Tsunami warning circa. Dec. 2024
Seismic measurement, where weak or strong faults that are measured as seismometer, textual references to cartography, taking stock of tectonic plates.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42331326
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20250318161013/https://www.tsuna...

by mceachen

1 subcomments

In case the site gets hugged to death:
https://www.tsunami.gov/events/PAAQ/2025/12/08/t6yfla/1/WEAK...
WEAK53 PAAQ 081430 TIBAK1
Tsunami Information Statement Number 1
NWS National Tsunami Warning Center Palmer AK
630 AM PST Mon Dec 8 2025
...THIS IS A TSUNAMI INFORMATION STATEMENT FOR ALASKA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON, OREGON AND CALIFORNIA...
EVALUATION
----------
* There is no tsunami danger for the U.S. West Coast, British Columbia, or Alaska.
* Based on earthquake information and historic tsunami records, the earthquake is not expected to generate a tsunami.
* An earthquake has occurred with parameters listed below.
PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS
---------------------------------
* The following parameters are based on a rapid preliminary assessment of the earthquake and changes may occur.
* Magnitude 7.6
* Origin Time 0515 AKST Dec 08 2025 0615 PST Dec 08 2025 1415 UTC Dec 08 2025
* Coordinates 41.0 North 142.3 East
* Depth 32 miles
* Location in the Hokkaido, Japan region
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND NEXT UPDATE
--------------------------------------
* Refer to the internet site tsunami.gov for more information.
* Pacific coastal regions outside California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska should refer to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center messages at tsunami.gov.
* This will be the only U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center message issued for this event unless additional information becomes available.
$$

by spullara

0 subcomment

Did the title of the page change as only advisories are shown on the map. A warning is a very specific thing where the tsunami was seen and is coming.

by NooneAtAll3

0 subcomment

GeologyHub video about this earthquake and "megaquake warning" that followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1POo07B2Iko

by jeffbee

2 subcomments

Does anyone else find the way of using tsunami.gov totally baffling? It tells the user almost nothing, and the target of all the hrefs for the supposed messages listed in the map is just the tsunami.gov homepage again. The entire above-the-fold is occupied by the map, and the map tells the user nothing.

by i4k

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Does anyone has information if any prefecture got hit by big waves? If none, how much time usually before the warnings are lifted?

by ChrisMarshallNY

1 subcomments

Damn. That sounds bad. Hope it didn't trigger a tsunami.
I guess we'll know, soon.

by cpncrunch

0 subcomment

0.3-1m.

by rasz

0 subcomment

Any ram fabs in northern Japan?

by gcanyon

0 subcomment

5.1 is major?

by anthk

2 subcomments

It has recently been a 4th degree one at Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the North of Spain. One of the least probable places you would even think of have an earthquake...

by snvzz

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Felt it in Tokyo. It was a quite solid shake, and lasted a minute or two.

by keepamovin

0 subcomment

Is it so serious? It was extremely deep, normally that's not as strong, right?

by trvz

0 subcomment

[flagged]

by ZebusJesus

1 subcomments

To think that these are happening more and more around the world and the USA just lost 9 detection stations near Alaska because of NOAA budget cuts. There was also the giant tsunami in the middle of nowhere this year.
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2025/11/01/state-seismolog...

by meindnoch

2 subcomments

We're seeing the buildup for a 9+ megathrust earthquake.