Tsunami advisory issued for California coast after earthquake strikes off Russia

Tsunami advisory issued for California coast after earthquake strikes off Russia

Good evening. This is NBC Bay Area news tonight, I’m Raj Mathai. We are following some breaking news now. An earthquake. The biggest earthquake in the world since 2011. We are now dealing with an 8.8 earthquake in Russia. And that’s triggered a tsunami advisory for all of California. Here’s what we know. The 8.8 quake struck just after 430 our time. It was just upgraded, actually, in the last couple of minutes from an 8.7 earthquake to an 8.8 earthquake. Now the California coast. Look at this map. Here’s the ring of fire, the California coast. The entire coasast is under a tsunami advisory. The bigger threat right now is what’s going to happen in Hawaii, which is now under a tsunami warning, which means experts believe that a tsunami is imminent. Evacuations are already underway in low lying areas of Oahu. If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to head up mauka head for cover as Hawaii responds to this tsunami warning. The warning came down on air. You can hear it in our newsroom. Yeah, pretty alarming there. This is a clip from one of our sister stations, NBC stations in Hawaii. This was about 45 minutes ago. The mayor of Honolulu addressing the danger as well. They’re anticipating any impacts to reach Hawaii there by around 715. So about 15 minutes. Excuse me, about 715 their time, which is about 1015 our time. Anybody who is in a flood zone, they were asking people to evacuate their properties to get to higher ground as much as possible. And that pretty much goes for anywhere. If you’re already on higher ground, then you stay there. But you know, it’s always a rush for the hills and we’ll see. Don’t want to sound panic, but this is happening very fast. Yeah, again, this is all unfolding in real time. So we are just following as responsibly as we can with what’s happening. Don’t know quite the magnitude, but nonetheless it’s a concern. This is a live look now at Waikiki Beach. Looks beautiful there in Honolulu. It’s about 4:00 Hawaii time. They’re expected to start sounding some sort of warning sirens there to clear the water. It looks like people are off the beach. They want to clear the water, clear the beaches in the next few hours. But for right now, things loo calm. Let’s bring in Chief Meteorologist Jeff Ranieri, who’s been tracking all of this for the past couple hours. Now, a couple of things, Jeff, I just want to address with you, this all started as what, the biggest quake since 2011, this 8.8 in Russia. What’s the timeline now for us to see any type of big waves here in the Bay Area? Well, we’re thinking, you know, answering that immediately here, maybe around midnight, possibly a little bit after. We do have timetables on that. We’re just getting some new information in over the past half hour on potential wave heights and also arrival times. Now that quake again, 8.8 happening there in Russia, setting off just a cascade here of watches, warnings and advisories from these deep ocean buoys that are reading this, these wave heights in real time down here in Hawaii. We still are, as we heard there a well. Under tsunami warnings, wave heights could be three plus feet there also up into portions of Alaska three plus feet high. Some may be reaching up to about nine feet. On some of the larger estimates. We’ll have to see on that. But again, that is kind of the threshold there. We’ve also been now upgraded to a tsunami advisory. So that does does kind of up things a little bit for us. We’re not expecting the kind of waves that they are here in Alaska and Hawaii. But certainly those wave heights would be higher. So as you get those advisory alerts on your phone, what we want you to see here is it does include all of the Bay. Also the coastal areas, some parts of the North Bay here, as some of that water kind of flows into portions of the North Bay. But you’ll see here arrival times around the San Francisco area around 1240. So just after midnight. Anything here for the greater Bay Area, the way that the early estimates are coming in would be a foot and or less. Now, that still means if you’re in a harbor, any kind of Marina, you still have to be on high alert. It can kind of slosh around the water, maybe even do some minor boat damage. But again, the greater Bay Area here less than a foot. But this is the one we’re pinpointing here. Crescent City, right around midnight, maybe 3 to 5.7 foot tide levels above normal Crescent City. Santa Cruz Harbor may also have some heights above one foot, but Crescent City, the way that that is shaped, it’s kind of like a bowl. The water comes in, and then that water might be able to rise a little bit higher here. So they could have wave heights, maybe up around five feet right around midnight. But greater Bay Area would be less than a foot the way that we see it now. So yes, we are under this heightened alert, but we’re not expecting the largest by any means of the activity which is going towards Alaska, maybe parts of Japan and also Hawaii. It’s just concerning to hear all of this. We’re talking about. We hear these different types of warnings here. Jeff, we started out a couple hours ago. It was a tsunami advisory. Then it’s a tsunami alert now. It’s a concern. Can you can you kind of go through some of the variations here? It does. It gets so confusing on this because the parameters are different than some of our normal weather watches. So for us we’re under a tsunami advisory. You can see that the table here, you’ve got warning that’s the most powerful water inundation of water. Strong currents, strong waves three plus feet high. That’s tsunami warning. We’re right now under an advisory. So again it has been upgraded. For us. It’s going to mean some stronger currents and what we call wave action. It’s not just one wave. It’s going to be a succession of these smaller waves as the water is just kind of moving around. That would be less than a foot above normal tide level. Again, for us. We’re in this advisory category. We were in a watch earlier, which is some very minor wave action, but now again, it looks like it could be a foot or less. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you put it above normal tide level, it certainly is something we want to pay attention to and no doubt up towards Crescent City. This is where that water might be in the 3 to 5 foot range above normal tide level. So I’m sure people up towards Crescent City are heading to higher ground for us. We’re going to see the water rise on best estimate. Right now it’s less than a foot on those brand new data points we got in from the Tsunami Warning Center. Okay, that’s encouraging to ar that relatively speaking here. And just to clarify about the timeline, we’re thinking Hawaii, which is about 10 p.m. Our time, and then to the Bay Area in California. Can you review that? Yeah. Let’s go ahead. And we’re going to rewind our maps here. And what you’re going to see as we get back to this arrival times here. Crescent City right around midnight, 3 to 5ft San Francisco Bay Area less than a foot. Happening about 1240 after midnight. So again, we’ve got some small wave action coming our way, maybe a little bit larger up towards Crescent City. I think I’ve got one more graphic after this. Here we go with more arrival times here for California, and you’ll see everyone here, not only the Bay Area, but also including Monterey, Los Angeles, Oceanside all a foot or below. Based on those new estimates, with Crescent City being kind of in that more moderate to high range, where they certainly are a lot more concerned up towards Crescent City right now, getting that new data, getting those numbers in. That’s certainly, you know, putting everybody on a different alert level than we are right now. I mean, we’ve got to pay attention to this. We could see the numbers change, but right now we’re a foot and less above normal tide level. Santa Cruz Harbor is also kind of an interesting spot, the way that is shaped. So they may be a little bit above a foot. We’re not seeing any specific data for Santa Cruz Harbor just yet, but that’s another location, Crescent City, Santa Cruz Harbor, those are the two locations that we’re kind of keying in on. For that water to be rising potentially above one foot. This is really this is really good information. Thank you Jeff. So really basically around here at least after midnight and right now relatively small changes in terms of a foot. Nonetheless we need to we need to be alert. Thank you Jeff. We’ll get back to you in just a short while. Now we have been through this before. We faced a tsunami warning in 2022 when an underwater volcano erupted near Tonga, spurring warnings and ultimately flooding and damaging docks in Santa Cruz that caused about $6 million in damages to the Santa Cruz harbor. Jeff was just talking about that trouble spot, and then we mentioned 2011. That was the 9.0 quake in Japan, triggered those powerful waves and tore through the Santa Cruz har

A tsunami advisory was issued Tuesday evening for the California coast following an 8.7 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia. Meteorologist Jeff Ranieri reports.

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