May 30, 1998 Tsunami: Sanriku, Japan
A tsunami caused by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake began at Sanriku, Japan on May 30, 1998 at 18:18:15 UTC. The water rose as high as 0.01 meters.
Where the waves reached
The source of the tsunami. No runup with a place is recorded for it.
- Under 1 m
- 1 to 3 m
- 3 to 10 m
- 10 to 30 m
- 30 m and more
- Height not recorded
Travel times
How long the first wave took to reach each part of the ocean, one line for each hour up to 24, estimated from the source and the depth of the sea.
The travel times are computed in your browser, which needs JavaScript.
- 1 to 4 hours
- 5 to 6 hours
- 7 to 14 hours
- 15 hours and more
Computed in your browser the way NOAA’s own travel time maps are: the wave travels at the square root of gravity times the depth, over NOAA’s ETOPO1 depths averaged to a 10 arc-minute grid. Checked against NOAA NCEI’s maps for 21 tsunamis over the first 24 hours, these lines fall within 10 minutes of NCEI’s at half the points compared and within 52 minutes at 9 in 10. They give when the first wave could arrive, not how high it is; bays, harbors and island chains finer than the grid can see it later. Not for use in a warning: see tsunami.gov.
The tsunami
- Date
- May 30, 1998, 18:18:15 UTC
- Source
- Sanriku, Japan
- Cause
- Earthquake
- Earthquake
- Magnitude 6.2, 33 km deep
- Maximum water height
- 0.01 m (0.0 ft)
- Runups recorded
- 0
- Waters
- Ocean
- How certain
- Definite tsunami
- Source location
- 39.027° N, 143.441° E
The toll
The record gives no deaths, injuries or damage for this tsunami.
What the record says
NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.
Although no tsunami were detected at the coastal tide stations, the OBTMs, about 80 and 100 km apart from the hypocenter, detected a small amplitude tsunami generated from the earthquake ( Fig. 3).
The amplitude of the tsunami is about 1.5 cm (peak-to-peak) and the period of the wavelet is about 300 seconds.
(reference #12661)
More
Every tsunami in 1998The 1900sTsunamis of JapanThe earthquakeThis day in weather historyAlerts in force
Sources
Tsunami events and runups from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-09-24. NCEI tsunami event 5742.