Earthquake, Tsunami, and Region 8

The above animation shows the far reaching impact of the Tsunami that followed the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit near Japan. When I got home last night, I settled into my recliner and clicked on the TV to chill out for the night. Within minutes, my phone showed the alert on Twitter of the major Earthquake. At the time, it had been ruled a 7. something. I forget now, but even at that magnitude, I knew it was huge. 

I turned on the big three "24 hour news channels" and realized that MSNBC is no longer a "24 hour" news channel. That's a subject for another time, but they are a pathetic news organization that are fortunate enough to have some good people working for them.  Anywho, CNN and Fox were quickly on air. 

As I watched the footage on CNN, it was absolutely shocking to watch it unfold on LIVE TV. The fires, the wave, the cars being swept away, the chopper video of the Tsunami swallowing up the land. All of it was unreal. I had a sick, nauseous feeling. I was the only one awake in the house and felt the need to speak to someone. Honestly, it was overwhelming. If you can watch something like that and not be affected, you have something wrong with you. I stopped watching and prayed. Prayed for the people of Japan. Prayed for the government. Prayed for the future. And prayed for mercy on those being impacted. This was a huge, huge event in the history of Earth.

That's my personal story of how things unfolded last night. It's still shocking to watch the video. I can't imagine something like that happening in the US, but it could. The Earth is SO LARGE, yet SO SMALL. Even though the Earthquake was on the other side of the EARTH, it was detected in Region 8. It happened at 11:46 PM our time and the helicorders here in NEA detected it shortly before midnight. It took less than 15 minutes to be detected HERE in NE Arkansas! See it for yourself. Here are two helicorder graphs from Gosnell, AR. I randomly chose Gosnell, but it was detected on ALL Helicorders in the Midsouth. Here's yesterday's graph first. It ends at midnight last night:

Notice that it is relatively quiet, BUT look at the last few minutes of the day! This reads left-to-right, top-to-bottom, like a book. Do you see the last few minutes? Click the image to enlarge. NOW, look at the next graph that started at midnight: 

WOW, that was measured HERE in REGION 8! Now, we did not FEEL the Earthquake, but we detected it! It's a small world people.... 

That's all I have tonight. I believe I'm going to start posting more things that are not weather-related on the blog. If you look at the early days of my blog (back to 2004), I really talked about more things outside of the realm of weather. I may start again. I'm heading to my nieces birthday party tomorrow! I'm really looking forward to seeing my 3 nieces. They are hilarious.

Have a great weekend!

Ryan