The political earthquakes of the Middle East were upstaged by Mother Nature this morning when a series of powerful earthquakes struck just off the coast of Japan. The planned "Day of Rage" in Saudi Arabia was swept off the headline bars of news outlets the world over by the massive tsunami that struck the shores of Japan, sweeping cars and building inland and killing hundreds.
It began quietly enough when a relatively normal quake of magnitude 4.4 struck the Kurile Islands at 5:23am. Nothing more was felt until Kamchata to the north started rattling of a string of quakes registering 5.0, 4.7, 5.1 and 4.7 just after noon. The seismic activity migrated south to Japan's Bonin Islands with four more 4.7 range quakes, and this continued throughout the region with quakes striking off the Ryukyu until a large 7.2 quake struck Japan near the island of Honshu a 2:45pm. It looked like a typical quake scenario, with many regional foreshocks building up to this 7.1 event, and at least 17 aftershocks in the 4.7 to 5.3 range over the next 12 hours. Then Mother Nature really vented her wrath with a string of much larger quakes above 6.0 magnitude.
A 6.1 quake struck off Honshu at 6:16 am UTC. Another 6.0 struck a few minutes later at 6:44pm as the sun began to set. Three hours later yet another 6.1 struck at 9:22am. What appeared to be large aftershocks to the 7.1 event were actually fore-shocks to a massive 8.9 quake at 2:46pm local Japan time. This was the fifth largest earthquake on record. It has since been followed by a string of quakes that each would have made headlines under normal circumstances: 6.4, 6.4, 6.8, another 7.1, 6.3, 6.3, 5.8, 5.9, 6.3, 6.1, 6.1, six more quakes in the 5.5 to 5.9 range then 6.2, 6.2, 6.5, 6.1 then ten quakes in the 5 range, another 6.0, another ten quakes in the 5 range, a 6.5 followed by 20 more aftershocks in the 5 range! That's 15 events of 6.0 or greater, two of 7.0 or more and the big 8.9 quake. Bear in mind these 6.0 plus quakes were on the same scale as our "Northridge" quake in the LA basin.
Tsunami warnings were posted throughout the pacific, with waves due to hit the west coast of the US by 8am this morning.
