For the most part, following Russia’s massive, 8.8-magnitude earthquake last month, the resulting threat of tsunami waves permeating throughout the Pacific Ocean, and toppling coastal communities, was of little-to-no consequence.
However, in certain areas, there were significant, or abnormally large, waves that struck specific shores – like in close proximity to the tremor’s epicenter in Kamchatka.
Below, check out footage from waves hitting the remote Russian peninsula.
Meteorologist Colin Myers commented: “I’ve never seen tsunami waves before. This is remarkable. Following last week’s massive earthquake (8.8MMW), these were the waves off the coast of northeastern Russia, much closer to the epicenter. Via Kamchatka Life. The power of water is enormous.”
According to Scientific American, the regions nearby to the quake were hit the hardest with subsequent tsunami waves – like 16-footers hitting the Kuril Islands just south of Kamchatka, as seen in the footage above.
Related: 7-Foot Tsunami Waves Strike Midway Atoll; Here’s the Video
But why was the tsunami aspect of this earthquake – one of the largest in recorded history – so minimal? Diego Melgar, a scientist at the University of Oregon, said:
“Initial warnings are based only on the estimated size and location of the source, but this alone doesn’t determine how much water is displaced or where waves will concentrate. To forecast impacts accurately, scientists need to know how much the fault slipped, over what area and how close to the trench the slip occurred.”
Still, why? All Pacific-facing communities were warned and primed for impending doom following the quake. Well, maybe we just got lucky…this time.
Scientific American continued: “The answer, in short, is this: the specific fault that ruptured produced pretty much exactly the tsunami it was capable of making, even if we intuitively feel like the effect should have been worse.”
So, perhaps this was a test run, because in the future, there are certainly more to come.
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