Chile Earthquake Spreads Tsunami Across Globe
The 8.3 magnitude Chile Earthquake last night is spreading a tsunami across the globe today. It's just hit southern California and Hawaii, but the change in the height of the water was less than one foot at Saint Monica pier in Los Angeles. Still, it was detectable by the Santa Monica gauge (this image as of 10:30 AM ET):
Fortunately, most of the observations have been of only a couple feet -- with the exception of the Chile shore, which saw damage from a rise in water of more than fifteen feet. I didn't say "wave" because I think that's confusing -- what you're talking about is a rise of the water level, or a "wall of water" 15 feet high (there was also a buoy observation of a 60-foot wave, but it could be bad data). It's more relate-able to a hurricane's storm surge.
For me, the eerie thing to see was the plethora of Tsunami advisories on AccuWeather.com and Weather.gov -- something I hadn't screen captured before, because there have only been a handful of tsunamis with advisories issued for California or Hawaii in the modern era -- only a couple since Tsunami warnings were delivered by the U.S. NWS.
Here are some of the images I screen captured last night:
