Last Nov. 16, at 8:43 p.m., a magnitude-7.5 earthquake struck deep beneath the ocean near Alaska’s Little Sitkin Island, far out in the Aleutian Islands. Within 25 minutes, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists issued a tsunami warning for U.S. Pacific coastal areas. Forty minutes later, a pressure sensor on the seafloor hundreds of kilometers south of Alaska detected the tsunami’s vanguard pulses.
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