The Honshu Tsunami

Via Jeff Masters, an animation of the Japanese tsunami's propagation across the Pacific basin:



The abstract yet brute physicality of the phenomenon makes it all the more horrifying to think about the lives lost to this disaster.

Says Masters, "Today's quake was the strongest in Japanese history, and will likely be the most expensive natural disaster in world history, surpassing the $133+ billion dollar price tag from Hurricane Katrina." He also has a nice map of the force distribution of the tsunami across the Pacific. The irregularities are interesting, as they were for the (obviously far less destructive) tsunami spawned by the Chile earthquake a year ago. I cannot explain them, but I do suspect fractal patterns may be involved.