Mother Earth decided to welcome my sister's arrival to Hawaii today with? A tsunami.
It's about 11:30pm HST right now. I've been watching the news for 2.5 hours at this point, flipping between the local news and CNN. Zac, Megan and I had been watching DVRed shows tonight so we weren't watching tv live. I had been taping tonight's CSI and decided to start watching it at 8:30. About half-way into the show the local news cut in alerting us to a large earthquake that had occurred in Japan about an hour earlier. It was unknown (at that point) whether a tsunami had been generated or not.
We finished our CSI and then turned to the news. A tsunami watch had been issued at that point. There was possibly a wave out there with an arrival time around 3:00am, Hawaii time. I think Megan was a little freaked out. I wouldn't have been freaked out, save that my sister was visiting. I convinced her that we were in a safe area and that we had no reason to worry. I then promptly logged on to the Hawaii Civil Defense website to make sure I wasn't lying.
Turns out that the revised maps (new and improved for 2011!) have our house about three blocks inland from edge of the evacuation zone. I've been pondering whether or not we need to leave for 2.5 hours now, especially since there is a rough estimate out there that a six-foot wave might be heading towards us. I even e-mailed our local tv station to ask about the evacuation zone maps and what sized wave they were designed to protect against. I'd like to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to the folks over at KHON2 news -- not only did they reply to my e-mail within about five minutes, they aired my question (and answered it) within 10 minutes. Kudos to the folks over there. They're in the business of disseminating information and they're doing a helluva job tonight.
They upgraded(?) the tsunami watch to a tsunami warning, so Zac and I talked about the possibilities of leaving for higher ground or not. (I'm really hoping that Megan is so exhausted that she's sleeping through most of this.) We're waiting to hear what the waves are like that are hitting Wake Island. It's another 2300 miles from Wake Island to us, though the wave is traveling over 600 miles an hour. [note: Doesn't that just blow your mind??? A tsunami travels across the ocean at over 600 miles an hour.] There are buoys that measure tsunamis off the coast of Japan, off the West coast of the US mainland, and there are a couple around Hawaii, but there are none in the vast Pacific ocean between Japan and Hawaii. This means that the scientists are sort of flying blind in trying to determine how large of a wave is heading towards us. They're going to have to rely on other types of measurements to get an estimate, and even then . . . who knows. Waves do funny things when they run into the shore.
So I've got about three and a half hours before anything would be happening in my neighborhood. I'll probably stay up for most of the night, checking on the news. Megan's crashed out from a long night/day of traveling and Zac, in all likelihood, will be going in to work tomorrow and needs to get some rest. I'll keep the watch. If it sounds like we need to leave, we will. We really would only have to drive a couple hundred yards up the hill to be safe so it's not like we have to drive far. 13 months ago the last tsunami warning turned out to be much ado about nothing and I'm hoping that is the case again tonight. But there are only so many times you can get lucky with a near miss. I just want everyone to be safe and sound. They've been showing footage of the tsunami that hit Japan after the earthquake today. I wanted to cry. My heart breaks for those people affected. I can only hope that the loss of life is minimal.
*sigh* It's going to be a long night.
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