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      Vanuatu Earthquake Triggers Tsunami Alert

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      Forecasters said tsunami waves hitting the coastline of the Pacific Island nation could reach up to a meter, or 3.2 feet, above the tide level.A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck near the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu early Tuesday afternoon local time, according to the United States Geological Survey.The epicenter of the earthquake was about 18 miles off the coast of Port Vila, Vanuatu’s coastal capital, the agency said. The country is about 1,000 miles northeast of Australia and comprises over 80 islands with a population of about 300,000.Tsunami waves reaching up to 3.2 feet above the tide level were possible for some costal areas of Vanuatu, the U.S. Tsunami Warning System said. Waves of less than one foot were possible for the coasts of nearby island nations like Fiji, Kiribati and New Caledonia, it said.This is a developing story. More

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      Strong Storm in San Francisco Brings a Tornado Warning

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      Less than two weeks after a tsunami warning, residents were jolted awake before 6 a.m. to consider a new potential disaster scenario.Powerful storms swept through parts of Northern California on Saturday, knocking down trees, causing widespread power outages and prompting weather officials to issue what they said was the first-ever tornado warning for San Francisco.The warning blared from cellphones around 5:45 a.m., jolting residents across the city from their sleep and into the sudden realization that many had long prepared themselves for what to do in the case of a sudden earthquake, but not a tornado.And it came less than two weeks after a similar alert echoed across the Bay Area warning of a different kind of disaster scenario: an impending tsunami that forecasters worried could strike along a vast stretch of the Northern California coast.That warning had been spurred by an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean and briefly caused a panic as people sought to get to higher ground. The warning was canceled a little more than an hour after it was issued.The tornado warning on Saturday, which was in effect for about 30 minutes, was urgent: “Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room,” it read in part.“That is the first time that we’ve issued a tornado warning for San Francisco,” said Crystal Oudit, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Bay Area. She said the service had done so after seeing conditions that tend to favor tornadoes as the storm approached the city.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Moderate Earthquake Rattles Reno and Lake Tahoe

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      Preliminary estimates showed that the quake had a magnitude of 5.8, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, though the intensity was still changing.Residents of Northern Nevada and the Lake Tahoe basin were rattled on Monday afternoon by an earthquake that struck southeast of Reno, Nev. Preliminary estimates showed that the quake had a magnitude of 5.8, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, though the intensity was still changing.There were no initial reports of major damage. The temblor struck just after 3 p.m. and was centered about 14 miles north-northeast of Yerington, Nev., a small town of about 3,000 residents. It was followed by more than 10 aftershocks, according to the U.S.G.S.At the Boys & Girls Clubs of Mason Valley in Yerington, children dove under their desks but nothing fell over, said Nick Beaton, 30, the center’s director of development.“The biggest thing that stuck out to me was it felt like the ground was rolling,” Mr. Beaton said. “You could feel the waves of the ground shaking while you were on your hands and knees.”In Carson City, Nev., dozens of miles west of the epicenter, the manager of the local Trader Joe’s grocery store, Brian Garland, said the quake was “just a little bit of a rumble — not enough to knock anything down, but enough so you knew what it was.”“Everybody just kind of looked at each other like: ‘Was that what we thought it was? Or are we all having some kind of mass vertigo?’” Mr. Garland said with a laugh.The earthquake struck during what experts say could be a period of increased seismic activity in the region, after decades of relative quiet. But its occurrence does not signal that a larger, catastrophic quake is any more likely.An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck off the coast of Northern California last week, causing little damage but setting off a tsunami warning that affected five million people.Seismologists have long warned that an overdue “Big One,” the likes of which the region has not experienced since 1906, could happen at any time. They have urged residents to prepare as much as possible by assembling emergency supplies and practicing “drop, cover and hold on” exercises with their children.It has been three decades since a significant quake struck the region.The Loma Prieta earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.9, shook the Santa Cruz Mountains in California in 1989, leaving 63 people dead and more than 3,700 people injured.A magnitude 6.7 quake in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1994 left 60 people dead, about 7,000 injured and more than 40,000 buildings damaged. The catastrophe also revealed a major defect in some steel-frame buildings, including many high rises, which under extreme shaking could collapse.Alex Hoeft More

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      What We Know About the 7.0-Magnitude California Earthquake

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      State and local officials were working to assess the full scope of the damage, but early reports appeared to show that the quake did not cause major destruction.An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck off the coast of Northern California on Thursday, briefly prompting a tsunami warning and leaving residents rattled from Southern Oregon to the San Joaquin Valley in California.State and local officials in California were working to assess the full scope of the damage, and early reports appeared to show that the earthquake did not cause major destruction. But it was the strongest to shake the state in more than five years.Here’s what we know so far.Where did the earthquake hit?The quake struck about 30 miles off the California coast a little before 11 a.m. local time, about 62 miles southwest of Ferndale, which has a population of about 1,300 people. It hit near a seismically active area known as the Mendocino Triple Junction, where three major tectonic plates meet.More than a dozen aftershocks were reported after the initial earthquake, including one with a magnitude of 4.3. The aftershocks could continue for weeks, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.Stephen DeLong, a geologist with the Earthquake Science Center at the U.S.G.S., said in a news briefing on Thursday that those closest to the epicenter, including residents of Ferndale, were the most likely to feel shaking or see any damage.The quake was the strongest to hit California since July 2019, when an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 hit near Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Was a Tsunami Warning Issued, and Then Canceled? A Forecaster Explains.

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      About five minutes after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California on Thursday morning, forecasters issued a tsunami warning at the highest of four levels.The warning, sent shortly before 11 a.m. Pacific Time, advised people to evacuate because of the potential for waves that could “injure or kill people and weaken or destroy buildings.” It was part of the National Tsunami Warning Center’s protocol in response to an earthquake, according to Dave Snider, a tsunami warning coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The warning was canceled about an hour later, but Mr. Snider said it was typical for a broad alert to be issued initially before it was refined or rolled back.In the first five minutes of an earthquake, the warning center acts quickly to decide whether to issue an alert and at which level, based on the magnitude and the location “because that’s all we have” at that point, Mr. Snider said.Then, about 20 minutes after a quake strikes, the center receives more details that can inform whether a warning should remain active.The center continued monitoring data from deep ocean sensors and coastal tide stations on Thursday, watching for “any very small and local problems to develop from underwater landslides,” Mr. Snider said. After determining that no tsunami was occurring, the center canceled the warning at 11:54 a.m.The warning center takes care with its decision to issue a tsunami warning, Mr. Snider said. “That’s a big deal.” More