Tsunami in japan (March 11 2011)
TSUNAMI IN JAPAN 2011 YEAR
The 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami was an 9.0-magnitude earthquake followed by tsunami waves.It was measured at 8.4 on the JMA seismic intensity scale.The earthquake happened 130 km (80 miles) off Sendai, Honshu, on the east coast of Tohoku, Japan on Friday, March 11, 2011 at 05:46:23 UTC. It was at a depth of 24.4 km (15.2 miles).It was measured as 8.9 on the Moment magnitude scale, by the United States Geological Survey. This makes it the largest earthquake to hit Japan in recorded history.It is also the seventh biggest earthquake in the world since records have been kept.Hundreds of people were killed.
BASIC THINGS ABOUT TSUNAMI
Tsunami is a series of waves produced by an event in the ocean such as an underwater landslide or an earthquake that cases large amounts of seawater to be displaced . Sometimes they can be very large. Catastrophic ones occur a few times a century, Other times they are so small they virtually undetectable.
For a long time tsunamis were erroneously called tidal waves. A tidal wave according to Oxford English Dictionary is a "high water wave caused by the movement of the tide." It is different from a storm surge a flood of water that occur when water pushed inland by a storm such as a typhoon coincides with a high tide. The word tsunami is derived from the Japanese tsu ("harbor") and nami ("waves").
Most tsunamis are comprised of a series of crests and troughs called a "wave train" and have a leading wave followed by crests that push it from behind. Damages is not caused so much by huge wall of water crashing down like a large beach wave but rather by a surge of water than pushes far inland. The waves comes in series, sometimes with many minutes passing from one to the next.
Waves a meter high can severely damage houses. A two-meter-high tsunami can destroy wooden buildings. Often the damage caused by receding waves being sucked to the sea is more severe than that caused by advancing waves. Receding waves can also drag people far out to sea.
The height of a wave can differ significantly depending on the contour of the land areas that are stricken. A narrow creek can funnel such waves, causing them to rise to a height of 10 meters. If the earthquake that generates the waves is nearby the waves come in rapid succession. If the earthquake is farther away the waves can arrive over a period of several hours.
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