Japan forecasting tsunamis up to 3m across basically the entire eastern coast. First waves will hit within 10 minutes.
https://www.nhk.or.jp/kishou-saigai/tsunami/
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/live/ (live, Japanese)
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live/ (live, English)
The east coast is also where the vast majority of Japan's population lives, and was previously hit by the 2011 tsunami (Fukushima and all that). We're about to find out the hard way what lessons they have learned.
Update: First detected wave in Nemuro, Hokkaido (northernmost Japan) was only 30cm. There may be more. Waves of 3-4m have apparently already hit Kamchatka in Russia.
Update 2: We're almost an hour in and highest waves to actually hit Japan remain only 40 cm. It looks unlikely that this will cause major damage.
Here are some live streams.. No action yet. Fingers crossed!
From a helicopter Japanese KATU news https://www.youtube.com/live/mBQHNV7cqrM?si=lwqB5YHknA7KUTY_
Webcams https://www.youtube.com/live/5pTPKHJxQ4g?si=xWe5MkLKIZ3N5I8D
Hawaii news https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lVy5nLWruu0&pp=ygUSSmFwYW4gdHN...
Now that things have calmed i can say that the webcam chats were very entertaining
Japanese news reporting during disaster scenarios is something to behold.
The screen is filled with data and blinking like a Bloomberg Terminal.
To be fair, most of Japanese TV is like that. I always joke that the primary reason they developed HD TV was to be able to cram more text in every corner xD
haha, makes a lot of sense!.
But then again, take a stroll around a shop-laden street in Japan and you'll see the exact same thing. They just like it that way.
Funny thing is how for interior design they do a full 180 and typically go very minimalistic.
And most Japanese websites.
Also when you visit most japanese websites you can see this phenomenon.
I've read an explanation once that this is because culturally, japanese people perceive a wealth of information and choice as being re-assuring and trustworthy, while most westerners feel more re-assured by seeing less content and choice presented in a more minimalist kind of way.
I actually prefer content style of Japanese websites. I get all the relevant info on one screen instead of having to scroll/click thru tens. The western style websites are very inefficient and hide info (feels scammy with lack of info).
Can you point to some japanese websites that have an english version and are a good example of this?
My favorite is the NHK reporters standing in the middle of absolutely nowhere with their NHK helmets. No matter what the event, there is a reporter wearing a helmet.
Also, the very first thing they say when the camera cuts to them is that they are standing in designated evacuation zone X that's Y meters above sea level.
Then the cameraman zooms at the ocean, which is blurry and shaky because they're in the designated evacuation zone Z km away from the coast.
Self-satisfaction or more professional?
Yes, but it does make sense.
Eg. old people without smartphones or someone just turning their TV on, seeing big letter "Tsunami evacuate" with map and other information. You instantly know the most important information and you can act on it.
A̶F̶A̶I̶C̶T̶,̶ ̶N̶T̶V̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶o̶r̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶3̶m̶ ̶w̶a̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶i̶t̶ ̶J̶a̶p̶a̶n̶.̶
EDIT: Apologies, I misunderstood—a reply to this comment said they were just predictions. (I saw in this video[0] that the first waves had arrived, and assumed the heights would've therefore corresponded to actual measurements. But it's still in the "predictions" section, and I should've noticed that before posting....)
No. That's the predictions. Biggest wave so far has been 60cm (EDIT: as of 6am UTC it's 1m30cm, but that's still relatively small. It came up almost exactly to the top of the pier in Kuji.)
I've updated my comment, I indeed misunderstood what I read.... Unfortunately it's too late for me to delete the comment, so everyone please feel free to flag/downvote it (both to push it down for the sake of clutter, and also to punish my carelessness :-P).
How big was the 2011 tsunami? Is 3m bigger or smaller?
It's complicated. Tsunami forecasting is a very inexact science and "3m" means "very large".
The average actual height in eastern Japan (Tohoku) was 4-6m, but there were peaks up to 20m in places like Ofunato where the local geography funneled all the water upwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
For perspective, the tsunami that topped the seawall at Fukushima Dai-ichi had a peak height of ~14m.
The seawall was 5.7m.
Is height the only thing that matters? Presumably 1x 2m wave is less impactful than 10 x 1m waves spread 20 seconds apart?
My wife decided to not travel to Japan due to an impending warning from a manga for July 2025. I have been making fun of her all month only to get this tsunami warning now!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2025_Japan_megaquake_prop....
> The 2021 reprint capitalizing off this revived popularity warned of a "real disaster" in July 2025, causing a minor case of mass hysteria in 2025 when summer trips to Japan from East Asia decreased markedly and several airlines even cancelled flights.
Sadly we won’t hear from the partners of everyone whose manga didn’t successfully predict a real disaster in a month.
That's because the other mangas forgot to adjust by +/- some 1000 km for location, 25 days, 365 days, 1825 days, or some other arbitrary but possibly nicely divisible number, for when and where it strikes.
You also have to conveniently forget the things that don't sell mangas such as annual typhoons, heatwaves, and of course thousands of premature deaths from man-made causes such as pollution and poor lifestyle.
Otherwise, if predicting disasters was easy, everybody would be doing it. No, it takes special, paper-based skills such as mangas , tarot cards, weekly horoscopes, etc.
Reminded of the available $1m award from James Randi’s org that was never claimed b/c no one could ever do anything supernatural under reasonable testing conditions.
(Woo is surely possible but all those who can pull it off were gifted abilities that are deactivated by non-monetary incentives)
I’m pretty sure they sell mangas about deaths from man made causes. I’m not an expert but I am fairly certain about this
Well, you can continue to make fun of her because, fortunately, this has turned out to be basically nothing (for Japan, anyway).
> The statement was revised later to specify the date "July 5, 2025" as that of an asteroid impact,[8] or even the end of the world.[9]
Ryo Tatsuki clarified it wasn't her that said July 5th was when the big one will hit but that it was her publisher that pushed that date for marketing and sales.
She along with the Thai clairvoyant and Brandon Biggs all say July is the month when the earthquakes and tsunamis begin.
It is unwise to simply write this off, Ryo Tatsuki said she saw 4:18am in July 2025 which can only mean 14 hours from now we will know if that is it.
It is July 30th 2:14pm, in 14 hours it will be July 31st 4:18am. After that a 20 hour period until the deadline.
This article states that that the book references the 5th day: https://www.newsweekjapan.jp/akane_t/2025/05/202575jaxa.php
Is it wrong? Did the book actually just call the time and month, not day?
> It is unwise to simply write this off
No it isn't
That is _really_ big. It will likely crack the top 8 ever recorded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
I think it has been revised to 8. Earth is going off today. Edit my mistake, 8.8 now!
USGS still has it listed as magnitude 8.7.
(Update: It was just revised upward to 8.8.)
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000qw60...
The other way around it seems, on `07-29-2025 23:24:56 UTC` went from 8 to 8.7 [1]
[1] Table on https://www.tsunami.gov/
Looks like it was just updated to 8.8?
The 1960 Valdivia quake released about 1.5e23 J, or about 1000 hurricanes, or about 25% of the total energy of all earthquakes in the past 100 years.
From videos online so far, it seems the strength of the quake didn't translate to massive lateral movement. There seemed to be lots of intense P-wave wiggling and bumping rather than large S-wave swings back and forth. The big Japan quake was one of those, where you saw offices being slid back and forth and everything flying off shelves.
Not sure what that means for the tsunami - but so far it seems less intense than the 8.8 would imply.
Japan uses a scale that measures the movement[0]. Of course depending on where you are the result changes, but it's a lot more usable for the practical "how much shaking will be involved here/was involved here".
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...
Holy crap. That scale definitely makes it pretty clear what the effect of a quake is! Here's the highest level:
Intensity: 7
Category: Brutal
Description: Standing or moving is only possible by crawling. People may be thrown through the air.
Wow. The same region had a 9.0 in 1952
~1.3m water column height variation observed by the closest DART buoy at 48°7'34" N 163°22'35" E (5787m nominal water depth).[1]
[1] https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=21416&typ...
Is that a lot?
Not that it's much use to compare, but the closest DART buoy 21418 to the M9-9.1 2011 Tōhoku earthquake[1] (which had an epicentre just 72km East of Japan's east coast) recorded a water column height variation of ~3m.[2][3] The closest DART buoy to today's M8.7-8.8 earthquake is 21416 and this recorded a water column height variation of ~0.6m back in the M9-9.1 2011 Tōhoku earthquake.[4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
[2] https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/data/DART/20110311_honshu/j...
[3] https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/dart/2011honshu_dart.html
[4] https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/data/DART/20110311_honshu/j...
Quick link to the tsunami view: https://www.tsunami.gov/
Just “watch” level for US west coast, but warning level for Hawaii and Alaska.
Air alarms are going off in Hawaii. Still a few hours away, but they are not joking around. Saying it can wrap around all the islands and hit anywhere
Phone just went off screaming with a warning here in NZ - more a "stay away from the water" warning than a "head for the hills" one
Impressive, glad the alarm chain works. And from what you say the warning message is also clear and understandable. Not tech or geology jargon that people don't understand and then take no or the wrong actions.
It will arrive in California in the middle of the night. Hope they don’t materialize.
I have family staying in Waikiki
Watch has been upgraded to Warning (Aleutian Islands and California from Cape Mendocino to the Oregon border) or Advisory (California from Cape Mendocino south, and pretty much everything from the California/Oregon border to Alaska until you reach the Aleutian Islands, it looks like.)
Upgraded to an "advisory" for the California coast.
[flagged]
I’m in Costa Rica on vacation, hotel said the beach is closed but they didn’t know why (lol yeah right). Per tsunami alerts it should be hitting right now at 1-3M above tide, I don’t see any evidence on various beach livecams like Taramindo. I’m in puerto Jimenez which is on the inland side of a small peninsula in southern CR so not expecting much.
Has anyone heard how bad it was in Petropovlosk? USGS estimates "severe" shaking with the possibility of moderate to heavy damage and a chance of fatalities.
They have had quite a swarm of quakes there over the last couple of weeks, including one that was M7+ around the 20th.
From what I see in Russian-language news, only relatively minor damage. I've lived in Petropavlovsk, it's an ugly city in various states of disrepair, but they do take seismic reinforcements seriously, like mag 7 should cause zero damage according to plan.
It's basically immune to tsunamis as it's protected by a bay with narrow entrance that extinguishes the waves, also most of the city is raised at least 10m above the sea.
it's not That ugly :)
but yeah I totally get what you mean, better watch volcanoes and nature than the urban scape around
indeed thankfully not that much damage there
Severo-Kurilsk, an island town destroyed by a similar tsunami in 1956, lost its port again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severo-Kurilsk — the rest of the settlement was rebuilt on higher ground, leaving only the port vulnerable.
The settlement is notable as having belonged to the Japanese in late 19th and early 20th centuries, who once relocated islanders there. Russian Wikipedia says they were Ainu.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/50°40'00.0"N+156°07'00.0"E...
That port right next to the water has probably disappeared.
So far the news here has only shown damage to a school (which apparently was empty due to repair work), and some bad flooding in one part. Let’s hope for the best.
Current official news:
Around 3k were evacuated in the region to safe areas as a precaution: aftershocks are expected for a month.
Some buildings (including hospitals) have cracks due to an earthquake.
Some minor damage to power lines, some near-shore flooding at some businesses.
All in all, it’s ok.
People tripping over eachother arguing whether a tsunami is a "wave" on a disaster warning submission... If HN was a village everyone would drown in the process.
Didn't it take years to solve the debate about light being a particle or a wave?
..I'll show myself out :)
Get a daily email with the the top stories from Hacker News. No spam, unsubscribe at any time.
