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Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued

349 points| lattis | 3 months ago |www3.nhk.or.jp | reply

https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/quake/quake_detail.html?eve...

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/weather-disaster/tsu...

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?currentFeatureI...

https://www.tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2025/12/08/25342050/2/WEPA40

160 comments

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[+] pezezin|3 months ago|reply
I live in Misawa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misawa,_Aomori) and work in Rokkasho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokkasho), which is the area where the earthquake hit the strongest. It was quite violent, apparently the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the region. My house suffered no damage other than a few things falling off the cabinets, and I could sleep soundly afterwards, but lets see today at work.
[+] pezezin|3 months ago|reply
Update: the tsunami warning has been lifted, in the end there was no major damage.
[+] intunderflow|3 months ago|reply
Was in a hotel in Sapporo, almost got thrown out of bed. Lot of people in the hotel lobby now.

Considering leaving Hokkaido by air if a Hokkaido and Sanriku Subsequent Earthquake Advisory is issued, don't really want to be in a potential megaquake.

[+] cedws|3 months ago|reply
People were freaking about the July megaquake prophecy and nothing happened. Trying to time it is silly, just chill and enjoy your stay, you'll probably be fine.
[+] jmward01|3 months ago|reply
I'm not a geologist, but this was pretty deep (44.1k) so not likely a foreshock right? Any actual geologists have a thought here? I know we have seen some indications that foreshocks can happen before megathrust earthquakes but it would need to be at the interface right? This looks like it is just the subducted slab deep down which in the 'intermediate zone' so not impacting the interface that 'slips' in a megathrust earthquake. (again, not a geologist) Now there have been, by that I mean just now, a 6.6 aftershock that was only 10km deep so that is potentially more concerning?
[+] akg_67|3 months ago|reply
Good luck, the Sapporo Chitose airport is closed for inspection of both runways.

BTW, you are safer in hotel than outside. No need to stay in lobby, go to bed, just protect your head. I experienced much bigger one in Sapporo in 2018.

[+] throwup238|3 months ago|reply
This would be the tenth major earthquake (7+ magnitude) along the Pacific ring of fire this year.

With the Kamchatka and other earthquakes in the news recently I had a fear that were building to some major event but turns out that this year is about average if not slightly below average for major quakes along the ring of fire.

[+] markus_zhang|3 months ago|reply
I heard that smaller (relative) earthquakes actually lower the prob of larger ones, so maybe it is a good thing? A bunch of 7.X earthquakes in the ocean are not going to be hugely destructive.
[+] bamboozled|3 months ago|reply
The year isn’t over yet though … Jgov said there is a slightly higher chance of an 8+ in the next few days. Hope not.
[+] almosthere|3 months ago|reply
It's probably related to a phenomenon we're not yet aware of.
[+] lagniappe|3 months ago|reply
Somewhat offtopic curiosity: Is there anything that Japanese fishkeepers do to keep the water and livestock inside the tank during earthquakes? Here we have no such risk for earthquakes, so a 600lb tank of water 4ft off the ground isn't much of an issue, even when bumped. I'd imagine earthquakes of this frequency could complicate that.
[+] jeffbee|3 months ago|reply
Does anyone else find the way of using tsunami.gov totally baffling? It tells the user almost nothing, and the target of all the hrefs for the supposed messages listed in the map is just the tsunami.gov homepage again. The entire above-the-fold is occupied by the map, and the map tells the user nothing.
[+] oniony|3 months ago|reply
The map has pins for events. At this moment there is one off Japan and one off Alaska.
[+] ghjv|3 months ago|reply
anyone able to ping this to the lads at the National Design Studio?
[+] octaane|3 months ago|reply
https://www.tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2025/12/08/25342050/2/WEPA40

Shouldn't be too bad; USGS forecasts up to 1 meter tsunami.

[+] Kye|3 months ago|reply
1 meter is bad. That's a lot of water full of things you don't want slamming into you or any structure. Then it comes back full of even worse things.
[+] qwertox|3 months ago|reply
Today I got served this video "Earthquake and Liquefaction his Urayasu, Chiba 3/11/2011" [0], which is from the earthquake which caused the huge tsunami in Japan.

I have rarely seen something as scary as this.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGblnPeOXJg

[+] pengaru|3 months ago|reply
The flood videos of towns, cars, and people being violently washed away are way scarier IMO.

Urayasu looks built on the water and all I see in the linked video is a threshold condition where the water is just barely peeking up through the ground below. People are still walking around, cars driving. There are far more chaotic and destructive scenes on youtube from that tsunami.

[+] Medox|3 months ago|reply
Terrifying. I know that Japan is earthquake-proofing its architecture but how about the underground infra? Do they have to dig and redo the pipes? The cables seem to be mostly overground (at least in this video) and are probably easier to repair (oldschool infra ftw).
[+] eej71|3 months ago|reply
Oddly enough, the YouTube recommendation engine served that one up to me too.
[+] linhns|3 months ago|reply
Epicentre very deep underground, so shouldn’t be dangerous aside from small tsunamis.
[+] onceiwasthere|3 months ago|reply
Your comment prompted me to go read about epicenters and I learned something new. The hypocenter of an earthquake is apparently the point of origin of the earthquake and the epicenter is the point on the earth's surface directly above the hypocenter. Had never heard of a hypocenter before.
[+] tkgally|3 months ago|reply
About 20 hours after the earthquake, the University of Tokyo sent out a follow-up advisory to faculty, students, and staff [1, scroll down for English]. This part hit home with me:

“The ‘follow-up earthquake advisory for the Hokkaido and Sanriku Coastal regions’ was established following the earthquake (M7.3) that occurred off the coast of Sanriku on March 9, 2011, two days prior to the Great East Japan Earthquake (Tōhoku Region Pacific Offshore Earthquake) that occurred on March 11, 2011.”

I was eating lunch in a fourth-floor restaurant in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, on March 9, 2011, when that preliminary tremor occurred. I had felt many earthquakes before, but that one seemed different: longer, slower, creepier. It didn’t cause any damage, but I often recalled it after the much bigger one struck two days later. (I missed the March 11 quake, as I happened to leave for Osaka just a few hours before it hit. My office back in Tokyo was damaged, though.)

[1] https://kankyoanzen.adm.u-tokyo.ac.jp/%e5%8c%97%e6%b5%b7%e9%...

[+] tetris11|3 months ago|reply
NHK (english): https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20251209_02/

> The Japanese government set up a task force at the crisis management center in the prime minister's office at 11:16 p.m. on Monday in response to the earthquake.

A thousand Naruto shadow-clones just got deployed. I'm not being cute, these guys are heroes and role-models to all.

[+] stackghost|3 months ago|reply
What's a Naruto shadow clone? Google hits are just about a kids show.
[+] phantasmish|3 months ago|reply
I’m imagining the folks from Shin Godzilla.

I assume that movie is for Japanese civil servants like the show Silicon Valley is for programmers. Stuff like the repeated meeting-room changes for no apparent reason reads as too specific and weird to be made-up.

[+] dang|3 months ago|reply
(Thanks for the link - we've since merged the threads to a submission of that one. I've included the other major links that people have been posting in the toptext.)
[+] kachapopopow|3 months ago|reply
When I was in japan the earthquakes were oddly exciting rather than scary, had three different ones while I was there that visibly shook rather heavy objects around. Two being in a building and one outside.

It was rather interesting seeing things shift around leaving a permanent imprint that there was in-fact an earthquake and it wasn't some kind of illusion when earthquakes these size couple of decades ago would cause non zero amount of damage.

Although, I am scared for tokyo about the predicted earthquake that would push all these systems near the breaking point and even beyond it, but hopefully the past in not prediction of the feature and instead it'll just be a lot of smaller earthquakes.

[+] jacquesm|3 months ago|reply
Funny, I had the exact opposite reaction. Things I had taken for granted all my life suddenly became un-anchored and as a result so did I. I have never felt an actual feeling of panic that threatened to overwhelm me before that happened and it was a very mild earthquake. I had to really force myself to calm down and stay rational and do what was the safest rather than to give in to the 'flee' reflex.

The problem with earthquakes is when they start you know you're in one but you have no idea where you're headed, whether this is as bad as it gets or whether you're going to end up in a pile of collapsed rubble and what is the best decision greatly hinges on something you can't know ahead of time, which is the peak magnitude and the kind of earthquake you are experiencing.

[+] cedws|3 months ago|reply
I was secretly hoping for a 'proper' earthquake when I was living in Japan. Obviously I didn't want anybody to get hurt or anything to get damaged, but I only ever got to feel a few ~M3 earthquakes which were just slight bumps I felt when laying in bed.
[+] dyauspitr|3 months ago|reply
I lived in California for a while. I’ve always found earthquakes exciting. Probably because I trust the building codes and the ones I experienced were pretty mild.
[+] rdl|3 months ago|reply
I’m in Niseko (Hokkaido) and had just driven 2.5h through a snowstorm to my hotel, opened door, and put down bags and phone. Weird alarm from my phone (new phone; forgot to disable, which I usually do because where I live abuses the system for a bunch of stupid alerts for chronic issues), looked at it, realized in Japan it is probably real, so I stood in a doorway. Pretty decent sized storm.

If a tsunami affects me on a mountain something would be seriously wrong, so I’m not going to worry.

[+] hamandcheese|3 months ago|reply
Do those alerts work for foreigners on data-only SIMs?
[+] mceachen|3 months ago|reply
In case the site gets hugged to death:

https://www.tsunami.gov/events/PAAQ/2025/12/08/t6yfla/1/WEAK...

WEAK53 PAAQ 081430 TIBAK1

Tsunami Information Statement Number 1

NWS National Tsunami Warning Center Palmer AK

630 AM PST Mon Dec 8 2025

...THIS IS A TSUNAMI INFORMATION STATEMENT FOR ALASKA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON, OREGON AND CALIFORNIA...

EVALUATION

----------

* There is no tsunami danger for the U.S. West Coast, British Columbia, or Alaska.

* Based on earthquake information and historic tsunami records, the earthquake is not expected to generate a tsunami.

* An earthquake has occurred with parameters listed below.

PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS

---------------------------------

* The following parameters are based on a rapid preliminary assessment of the earthquake and changes may occur.

* Magnitude 7.6

* Origin Time 0515 AKST Dec 08 2025 0615 PST Dec 08 2025 1415 UTC Dec 08 2025

* Coordinates 41.0 North 142.3 East

* Depth 32 miles

* Location in the Hokkaido, Japan region

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND NEXT UPDATE

--------------------------------------

* Refer to the internet site tsunami.gov for more information.

* Pacific coastal regions outside California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska should refer to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center messages at tsunami.gov.

* This will be the only U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center message issued for this event unless additional information becomes available.

$$

[+] anthk|3 months ago|reply
It has recently been a 4th degree one at Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the North of Spain. One of the least probable places you would even think of have an earthquake...
[+] whitehexagon|3 months ago|reply
The updated IGN website doesnt work properly for me. The old site was so much better, do you know if there is an alternative?
[+] spullara|3 months ago|reply
Did the title of the page change as only advisories are shown on the map. A warning is a very specific thing where the tsunami was seen and is coming.
[+] i4k|3 months ago|reply
Does anyone has information if any prefecture got hit by big waves? If none, how much time usually before the warnings are lifted?