8.2 magnitude earthquake off Russia with potential to generate a tsunami
wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov
wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov
"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven!" - Thomas Jefferson
The point being, whether we believe it or not changes nothing. This person experienced it.
How easy it is to feel varies depending on what floor you're on, how well constructed your building is, what kind of ground you're standing on, etc, etc, etc.
Furthermore at that distance the earthquake should be a slow roller, which means that someone who is focused on something might not notice while another person in the same room could notice, realize how much motion there is, and freak out. I've been there as well - as the person watching a movie who ignored an earthquake that everyone outside of the movie was quite aware of.
So the fact that you live in Moscow and didn't feel it is not grounds to call BS on someone else claiming that they felt it.
Most relevant: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/icons/1923_0203.jpg
"The term wave is often intuitively understood as referring to a transport of spatial disturbances that are generally not accompanied by a motion of the medium occupying this space as a whole,"
For an analogy with (not quite an explanation, as the mechanisms are a bit different) a tsunami's speed, think of what happens when you pluck a guitar string. The back end of the string starts moving up before you even release the string. So, say you lift a string at, say 1cm/s for .1 of a second. (Almost) at the end of that 0.1s, the start of the wave that will form has reached the other end of the string, moving at meters per second (the 'almost' is because the string will deform. Ultimately, relativity has something to say here, too, but that only matters when the resulting wave signal would move near the speed of light)
Is this some kind of tradition or does NOAA still use EBCDIC mainframes?
http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Computing/Capital_Letters....
I spent a decade as a communicator in the navy and radio teletype is still the primary method of communication at sea.
However, I argue that the NOAA could serve their warnings on the web in all lowercase for the sake of readability. Then again, that could be a quick hack for someone.
If it bothers you so much. :)
(I tried to do this back in about 1999. I don't think it's gotten much easier, although having geo APIs might help somewhat.)
Also, apparently there's some international standards around this kind of info that require it to be upper case: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/blame-united-n...
[1] which, incidentally, involved me sending thousands of SMS alerts to a co-worker yesterday evening as i ran through a replay of the chile earthquake, effectively DOSing[2] his phone. most entertainment i've had in months. beep. new magnitude estimate. beep. beep. beeeeep... :o)
[2] it's ok, it's only a demo, promise.
Currently (6:51 UTC), no warnings.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usb000h4jh#...
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadati%E2%80%93Benioff_zone
Looks like they can be felt very far but are less dangerous.
But it does seem like there might come a day when that tech is completely obsoleted.
*edit, not Haiti which has its own crazy deep-earth stuff going on in the area
The Caribbean instead has it's own smaller "ring": http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0121/Haiti-eart...
Because both islands are divided between 2 states each.
Presumably nuclear tests helped tensions to resolve in small earthquakes and now they build up and release a devastating one.
The Depth of the subterranean earthquake is generally a major factor in Tsunami (The main factor being the displacement of the water mass above).
The last two M9~ magnitude earthquakes causing deadly tsunamis (Indian Ocean 2004, Japan 2011) were only at a Depth of 30km (19mi). This one is very deep, at 619km (385mi) below the surface.