The National Weather Service has lifted a tsunami advisory for communities on the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck about 55 miles south of Sand Point. The advisory was lifted at 2:43 p.m. Wednesday.
The Weather Service at first issued a tsunami warning, which was later downgraded to an advisory for the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island. The warning included the cities of Sand Point, Cold Bay and Kodiak, where sirens went off intermittently Wednesday afternoon.
No major waves were reported in any community. In Sand Point, the Weather Service reported a wave just a few inches high.
“We measured about 7 centimeters or about two-tenths of a foot, which is not an impactful tsunami, but it was a tsunami,” said Dave Snider of National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer. “So we continued to keep track of that for about another half an hour, making sure that we didn’t see a second wave or a landslide that produced a tsunami.”
The earthquake struck at about 12:37 p.m. local time Wednesday, at a depth of about 9 miles, according to the Alaska Earthquake Center. In Sand Point, Kelly Bjornstad said the shaking knocked items off shelves around her house and sent things tumbling from her pantry.
“Some serving trays and other things literally flew out of it,” she said.
No major structural damage was reported, and the community had returned to business as usual later in the day.
State Seismologist Michael West, with the Earthquake Center, said earthquakes like this are common in the area.
“This is the kind of earthquake you read about in an intro to geology textbook,” he said.
But West said several large quakes in the region in recent years have caught the center’s attention, and today’s earthquake is likely part of a larger pattern of energy being released along the subduction zone.
“This section of the subduction zone is lurching or releasing that slip over a period of many years,” he said. “I think the question that sits out there is whether or not that activity would continue like this, or, you know, there's always that small percentage possibility of something a bit larger.”
The Earthquake Center reported dozens of aftershocks in the hours after the quake, including two aftershocks larger than magnitude 5. According to the USGS, the M7.3 quake was felt as far away as Anchorage.
KMXT's Brian Venua contributed reporting from Kodiak.
