Tsunami Hits The Shores Of New Zealand!!
 

A tsunami has struck the shores of New Zealand today after a strong earthquake (magnitude 7.6) occurred off the west coast of South Island, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Ewa Beach, HI.

Tsunami tide gauges measured tsunami amplitude at Jackson Bay, NZ, at 0.17 meters (or 0.5 feet).

The quake occurred at 2:23 a.m. Pacific time, July 15.

New Zealand ledgies who live along the shores of southwest & southeast New Zealand, stay tuned to your local emergency radio & TV.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off New Zealand's western coast Wednesday generating a small tsunami. No injuries or major damage were reported.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii warned that a tsunami was generated, but it later said the waves were less than 8 inches in height and the warning was canceled after about an hour.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532701,00.html

phew!!! just seen this news..thank goodness it's only a little wave. Having said that, I would imagine that NZers are fully prepared to move in a hurry if needs be...the threat of a major wave/quake/ volcanic eruption etc is never far from their minds (it's something wer'e used to from the get go..literally!)
Brandon....hope you didn't go out to the shore to see it!!!!!

I was sitting in bed reading...i thought my wife was under the bed messing with me. The whole thing shook like a coin operated vibrating bed in a cheap motel (not that I would KNOW what those are like...ahem...) Very scary...and technically that earthquake was nowhere near Wellington.

[QUOTE=tuigirl;831029]phew!!! just seen this news..thank goodness it's only a little wave. Having said that, I would imagine that NZers are fully prepared to move in a hurry if needs be...the threat of a major wave/quake/ volcanic eruption etc is never far from their minds (it's something wer'e used to from the get go..literally!)
Brandon....hope you didn't go out to the shore to see it!!!!![/QUOTE]

Yeah, those eight inch waves would have knocked him over, fa sho.

You guys are making fun of me! Now come on, don't joke about this. There seem to be a couple of misconceptions.

1) Don't confuse a tsunami -- even a very small one -- with a wind-generated surf wave. Even a small tsunami packs far more energy than a surf (or surface) wave.

2) Tsunami amplitude is not the same as wave height (crest to trough). Tsunami amplitude refers to the height of surge above mean sea level. So if mean sea level at high tide on a particular beach is 9 feet, a tsunami with an amplitude of 1 foot transforms that 9-foot high tide into a 10-foot high tide. It might not sound like a big deal, but it's an enormous difference in water volume at the shore.

This tsunami occurred right offshore of Fiordland, probably on the subduction fault. It's very dangerous when tsunamis occur so close to shoreline because the warning systems in place require more time to generate than a tsunami would require to reach the shoreline from the generating source. So let's say the warning system (& Australia has a very good one) takes 12 minutes from the time of the quake to the time of the warning being sent to authorities. But the tsunami is traveling at speed v & can therefore reach the closest shorelines to it within, say, three or four minutes. The only "warning" people on those nearby beaches would have is the quake itself.

And big quakes like this one can always generate subaerial & submarine landslides & slumps, which can create their own extremely dangerous tsunamis. It didn't happen this time, but it has happened in New Zealand's past, & will happen in the future.

Get used to it babe :xoxo: practice your door/underbed diving skills!! Wellington is overdue a big one btw, it's practically built on a faultline.. well the motorway is...(just to cheer you up);)

[QUOTE=vivfox;831151]gosh, you know what I mean :laugh:

David...I hope it didn't come across that I was making fun of you...jeez no, not at all.
Actually what you have now said, about the "technical" side of a tsunami is really interesting and shows me I was rather uninformed about it all, so now I'm alot wiser. thanks for posting.

God help me when the big one hits. It amazes me how that "big one" back in the 1850s brought up the shore line as far as it did.

Aaahhh, yes...the motorway faultline....along with the WIND...just another thing to love Wellington for...hehehe

I know you weren't. I was just affecting a phony umbrage.

You'll love this little clip! www.sendspace.com/file/h43ser

That's why we like you. ;)

A tsunami destroys the bay area:

Wowzers! That's scary! The baby cracked me up though ;)

We shouldn't laugh , but that is kinda funny!

That's no tsunami! That's Photoshop! Tsunamis don't look like that.

errr...duh...I know.....:blob1: it was the baby's fault

That poor kid. About to get his first swim lesson.

Here's a shot of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami striking the shores of Kata Noi. You can see that, far from looking like a towering Hollywood surf wave with a perfect curl, it more resembles the spilling over of a giant coffee cup.

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/e...iMoreWaves.jpg


And here's a picture of Stevie, John, & Ray performing Go Your Own Way at Irvine Meadows, Oct. 18, 1982.

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/e...ne10188213.jpg

ok...random last photo.....are you suggesting Stevies hair is like the perfect curl wave resmbling the " spilling over of a giant coffee cup" or are you suggesting her face looks a bit like that babies in the other pic???????? :D

Stevie was there too!

She even changed clothes for the occasion:

hmmm...lets not go there Viv.Tsunamis are not to be giggled at to be honest. Any force of nature thats threatening and to which we have no control, is not great. been caught in a brief brush fire myself (luckily the local fire brigade were handy) and that was bad enough.....moving on...what else can we talk about

I was in thailand for christmas in 2004. The boxing day tsunami was the scariest and worst moment ever, and I was on a hijacked plane once! not just scary though, it was too devastating for words. You could see people who were on the ground and had nothing to hang onto being swept under and afterwards you'd see people amongst all the rubbish. I was able to leave but I almost felt worse for doing that when you see the images of the thousands that were just left there with nothing.

Gosh Ruby, my being in a brush fire sounds paltry to what happened to you and all those others a lot less fortunate. Thanks for sharing, glad you were out of there ok.

wow! What a story! How awful.

In the summer of 2005, researchers at Columbia University made available a startling -- a shocking -- audio file that was finally circulated to the public.

When the megathrust quake off the Sumatra coast occurred, the subduction fault (the Sumatra-Andaman Fault) ruptured from south to north -- at a speed of over 6,000 mph -- like a giant zipper.

When an undersea earthquake occurs, it creates sound waves known as T waves. There are underwater microphones at select locations throughout the world that can pick up T waves & other energy pulses, and these microphones picked up the T waves of the Boxing Day Quake & recorded them.

It's an awe-inspiring listen. In this MP3, you can hear the two distinct phases of the great quake as the fault ruptures from a point on the south end to a point on the north end -- about 750 miles in all.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/zw1c38

During the first phase, which lasted about three minutes, the fault unzipped northward at about 1.7 miles per second. During the second phase, the rupture slowed to 1.3 miles per second & continued north for another five minutes until it reached a plate boundary where the fault changes from subduction to strike-slip (like the San Andreas).

Enjoy the MP3! It's haunting.

My post was not meant to offend, honestly. However I do have various photos I've been saving forever to post in the proper threads. Those pics were made by someone else. I have no photoshop skills. This just happened to be the place to post them and I must admit I do have a twisted sense of humor. I'm not going to make jokes while it is still fresh. That's the job of Howard Stern, not me.
I have told a couple of friends that since I have made jokes of serious life threatning situations it is only fair that I meet my fate in some bizarre way, like a bridge collapsing on my car as I am driving underneath it.
Then some person with a twisted sense of humor like mine will do the same to me as I have done. I guess it's called karma.
While I'm on the subject, here is another photo(gif) that will either seriously offend some people or will seriously make others laugh. I'm sure you guys will have an opinion:

New Zealand moves west after massive quake
 

July 22, 2009

In a few seconds, magnitude 7.8 quake shifts South Island's tip 12 inches

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Southern New Zealand has moved slightly closer to the east coast of neighboring Australia as a result of a massive earthquake last week off the country's South Island, a scientist said Wednesday.

The magnitude 7.8 quake, centered in the ocean near Resolution Island in the country's Fiordland region, twisted South Island out of shape and moved its southern tip 12 inches (30 centimeters) closer to Australia, seismologist Ken Gledhill said.

Gledhill, director of government-owned GNS Science's "GeoNet" national earthquake monitoring project, said the island's geographic shift showed the immensity of the forces involved.

"Basically, it's taken us closer to Australia," he told National Radio. "The country is deforming all the time because of being on the plate boundary, but this has done it in a few seconds, rather than waiting hundreds of years."

Last Wednesday's quake was the largest in the world this year and New Zealand's biggest in 80 years. No major damage has been found in the sparsely populated Fiordland region of South Island's west coast.

Thousands rattle the Earth daily — but only a few cause utter devastation.

"New Zealand has been very fortunate. This earthquake anywhere else would have caused huge damage," Gledhill said. He said the quake's impact will provide "invaluable information" on the underlying structure of the country.

Martin Reyners, principal scientist for GNS Science, said earlier that a shallow temblor of such magnitude would typically cause widespread damage and loss of life. Last week's quake, however, occurred in "soft rocks" between two tectonic plates, muffling its power, he said.

Reyners said the rocks had lurched rather than snapped, causing a low-frequency rolling rather than the high-frequency waves that are known to damage buildings.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32088458...ience-science/

Yeah if we get a 7.8 under the Thorndon fault, 60% of Wellington'll be destroyed.

Did you see that Mini-series movie they played on tv not long ago, and it was about Wellington getting struck by "the big one" and it goes through the lives of these people and how they either survived or died. It was super freaky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p81cdT12bdI

Yep that sounds about right...where did you say you lived again????

Viv..you didn't offend me as such, but I thought you might inadvertantly offend others and unless youv'e been caught in a "natural/manmade" disaster over which you can do b-all, I thought maybe it shouldn't have been joked at. A wee brush fire for me was bad enough, but Ruby clearly had a worse time. just a bit of self censoring, thats all.Post away ur wee clips though, some of them are funny.(I'm not quite sure about Steve's for me however)

good heavens closer to Australia!!! Can't be doing with that...how interesting though.
good job it was in Fiordland, probably the most sparsely populated area of the country (only a few Takahe live there don't they?) :laugh:

Gosh, quite realistic looking...Brandon, get practising those moves and cross ur fingers...

Eeek! I don't wanna die in an earthquake!!

All the more reason to be prepared !! (sorta, as well as you can be...) practice your diving skills!!!!! OR then again..just ignore it and hope for the best...

yeah I guess getting under the bed is the best thing eh ? Or a door frame. ..:shocked:

yep, either one , whichever is handiest at the time (it was desk diving when I was at school) and don't forget ur dearly beloved as well ....don't worry, you'll get used to it :)

Dearly beloved? I ain't a priest! ;)