Russia's emergency officials have warned that small tsunami waves could hit three districts of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Kamchatka Peninsula

A powerful 8.8 magnitude earthquake occurred near the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia, making it the strongest quake recorded since 2011. The event was caused by the Pacific Plate subducting beneath the Othotsk Plate in the Pacific Ring of Fire, releasing significant energy and prompting a minor tsunami warning for the Kuril Islands.

Tsunami waves of up to three meters were observed in some areas, but major regions such as Hawaii and the West Coast of North America were largely unaffected. Russian scientists have described the quake as a unique event and warn that aftershocks could continue for several weeks, though the risk of a larger subsequent quake is considered low.

Russia warns Kuril Islands for minor tsunami

And to get some analysis on the scale of the quake and the aftermath, I'm joined now by meteorologist Matthew Cappucci in Washington, DC. Matthew, good to see you again. This quake, 8.8, it's the strongest quake that we have seen since 2011. Do we know what made it so powerful? Yeah, definitely. You know, to give folks some perspective, an 8.8 is the equivalent of basically detonating one trillion pounds or one trillion kilograms of TNT. It's an enormous blast, an enormous amount of force that is released, and of course, that force comes from the Earth's crust, essentially fracturing and sliding against one another. This occurred in the Pacific Ring of Fire. It's on the periphery of the Pacific tectonic plate. And what's happening is that plate is moving northwest at about, we'll say, 77 millimeters, so roughly three inches every year. And it's colliding with and subducting or kind of going underneath a different plate called the Othotsk Plate. Now, that collision, that sort of convergence of the plates adds an enormous amount of stress and tension that is suddenly released every so often in these megathrust earthquakes as the Pacific Plate, which is dense and being crushed by the weight of the water above it, slides violently underneath the Othotsk Plate. That occurs in something called the Curled Kamchatka Trench, and that releases exceptional energy in these megathrust quakes. Now, the issue with the thrust quake, you have an up-and-down movement of the seafloor. In some earthquakes, you have a side-to-side shake. We call that strike-slip. But this was an up-and-down thrust quake. And for that reason, we displaced water. We essentially shook the seafloor and caused a potentially significant tsunami. Now, the good news, it looks like Hawaii largely escaped, for the most part, unscathed. A tsunami of one to two meters had occurred there in Kuluhui Bay Harbor area. There was a wave roughly up to about three meters, so about a meter and a half in terms of actual water level rise. But otherwise, the West Coast of North America seems, at this point, to have escaped mostly fine. Okay, yeah, because there were some alerts for the West Coast going all the way down to Los Angeles. But those, as you were saying, those alerts have been lifted somewhat. Let's talk about the tsunami wave, though. How fast does a tsunami wave travel once the earthquake has taken place? Almost as fast as a jet engine, if not even faster than a typical jet aircraft. You know, speed's over 500 miles per hour, so about 750, maybe 800 kilometers per hour. But the interesting thing, if you're on the open ocean on, say, a cruise ship, you wouldn't notice a thing as a tsunami passes beneath you because the tsunami, think of it as a wave of just energy, that energy is propagating through the ocean. And when you have an ocean that's three, four-plus kilometers deep, as much of the Pacific is, that energy has a lot of sort of room to be dispersed vertically. But once you start getting towards the coast and the bathymetry, or the shape of the seafloor, starts to slope upwards to meet both the continental shelf and, more importantly, the beaches, you're really compressing all that energy into a much narrower, smaller depth of the water. And that really bottles it all up, and that's when you get a wave to actually manifest and you push that water ashore. And that's why tsunamis are really tough to ascertain the magnitude of until they reach the coastline. Russian scientists are already saying that the quake was a unique event, and they're warning that aftershocks could last for up to a month. What do you say about that? And were there any signs that we were going to have a quake this massive? So aftershocks will actually last even longer than months, but I think the month threshold is roughly the point at which we'll stop feeling the biggest aftershocks. You know, with any earthquake, when you have a sudden buildup and release of stress, sometimes that release of stress places stress on other nearby faults or fractures in the Earth's crust, and that's where you get this continuous settling and additional slippage, and you get more aftershocks. With any given quake, there's a roughly one in 15 chance of getting a bigger earthquake after it. So last week, for example, we saw several high-magnitude five, low-magnitude six earthquakes in this part of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Those wound up being foreshocks or precursors to this most recent magnitude 8.8 quake. I do think this quake, however, was the main shock, and so after this, we won't see any bigger ones, but we still could see a few magnitude sevens over the next several days, perhaps weeks, before the risk finally starts to subside with this aftershock sequence decaying a little bit. But yeah, I mean, it certainly was a powerful quake and more could follow. Yeah, well, we certainly will be watching and following it. Meteorologist Matthew Capucci. Matthew, as always, thank you. Thank you.

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