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An earthquake with a moment magnitude of around 9.0 occurred off the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, as evidenced by Japanese records of tsunamis.
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1700 Cascadia earthquake
Megathrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest region
The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26, 1700, with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2. The megathrust earthquake involved the Juan de Fuca plate from mid-Vancouver Island, south along the Pacific Northwest coast as far as…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Moment magnitude scale
Measure of earthquake size, in terms of the energy released
The moment magnitude scale is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude based on its seismic moment. Mw was defined in a 1979 paper by Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori. Similar to the local magnitude/Richter scale (ML ) defined by Charles Francis Richter in 1935, it uses a…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Pacific Northwest
Region of northwestern North America
The Pacific Northwest (PNW) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the U.S. states of…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Tsunami
Series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water
A tsunami is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)