On this date a tsunami flooded the shores of Japan. But now we know this region has experienced such earthquakes and tsunamis historically and is likely to again in the future. This was primarily because there are no written records of such events, and it was believed the Cascadia subduction zone was not capable of producing great earthquakes. It is now thought to be capable of producing great earthquakes of magnitude 8 or 9, like those off Indonesia in 2004 and Japan in 2011.īefore the mid-1980s, the tsunami hazard to the Pacific Northwest coast was thought to be from distant tsunamis, those that would come from afar with hours for warning and evacuation. The Cascadia subduction zone is where the Juan de Fuca, Explorer, and Gorda tectonic plates are subducting under the North American plate. The source of these earthquakes and tsunamis is the Cascadia subduction zone, which lies mostly off shore and extends approximately 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Cape Mendocino in Northern California to Northern Vancouver Island, Canada. In recent decades, much tsunami and earthquake research has been focused on the coast of the Pacific Northwest, where more and more evidence points to large earthquakes and tsunamis in the past and the potential for more in the future.
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