Japan Earthquake

I am sure you are all well-informed of the devastating earthquake that hit Japan recently, unless you’ve been living under a rock (that’s not a good place to be by the way). Anyway, we were in Taiwan at the time. We had hired a car to tour the island and had visited the tip of the north coast at Yeliu to see a geopark consisting of a limestone cape (it was more interesting than it sounds). We were driving south and had been on the road for an hour or so when the announcement of the quake came on the radio. It stated that, consequently, a tsunami was on its way to, among other countries, Taiwan. Obviously we were concerned, although once it had registered that it was headed for the northeast coast, away from which we were driving, we relaxed. It was about 3pm when we heard this and the tsunami was scheduled to hit around 5.30pm. Of course we were anxious to listen to all radio reports in order to keep up with developments, so we stayed tuned in. All our anxiety and anticipation dissipated, however, when the tsunami turned out to be anti-climactic. Radio reports stated after the scheduled event that “the tsunami had no significant impact because…THE TIDE WAS OUT.” Right you are then, just so we’re clear, you have all these incredibly technical ometers and  graphs, and all kinds of imagery to measure all sorts of worldwide seismic activity hours before the event, but you don’t possess the tools to discern whether or not the tide will be out? Good one. Let’s wait and see that the reason for Armageddon not having the kind of impact it should have had was because of low cloud cover.