November 15, 2017 Tsunami: Bonin Islands, Japan
A tsunami caused by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake began at Bonin Islands, Japan on November 15, 2017 at 08:48:19 UTC.
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
- November 15, 2017, 08:48:19 UTC
- Source
- Bonin Islands, Japan
- Cause
- Earthquake
- Earthquake
- Magnitude 5.1, 10 km deep
- Runups recorded
- 0
- Waters
- Ocean
- How certain
- Probable tsunami
- Source location
- 25.437° N, 141.383° 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.
Despite noisy data, we detect tiny but clear tsunami signals by utilizing the similarity of tsunami waveforms at nearby gauges. The analysis of the tsunami signals shows that submarine caldera uplift events occurred during both earthquakes, similar to past events […] occurred due to trapdoor uplifts in Kita‐Ioto Caldera (reference #14174)
More
Every tsunami in 2017The 2000sTsunamis 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 6055.