Tsunami alert for the Western coast of North America.

Thinks that's been revised to 7.9 magnitude

News reports here state that most people heeded the tsunami warning sirens and went to higher ground (this would be mostly in outer coastal areas of Vancouver Island and further north), but after they arrived the tsunami alert was cancelled and nothing happened, so all good.

No idea, will try to find out. I don't think they sound these sirens (in B.C.) very often, seems that it was automatic on receipt of earthquake in given location and magnitude, then later it was realized by earthquake analysts that it was of the wrong sort to create a tsunami but the cancellation was about the same time that the wave was supposed to arrive.

We haven't had many large quakes that distant in recent years, the only test cases have been almost immediate local warnings that have generally been on such a short time cycle that people just ran for higher ground when they felt the shaking but those turned out to be too small in magnitude to create big tsunamis even where the quake was felt.

There has not been anything very actionable here since a large tsunami with the March 1964 earthquake (believe that was 9.2) near Valdez AK, and that one did considerable damage on west coast of Vancouver Island with some drownings, hence the warning system.

I think people out on the "outer" coast are very aware of these warning systems, but if one ever went off in the more sheltered inner coasts near bigger cities, I doubt that people would necessarily respond, in fact I don't even know what parts of the inner coast have that system in place. A quake in just the right spot in Puget Sound or the Strait of Juan de Fuca might cause a tsunami further inland but it has never happened in the two centuries of our recorded history, some archaeological indications that a big quake in Japan in 1700 sent a devastating tidal wave across the Pacific and did enormous damage to coastal native settlements.

Generally speaking this whole region (BC, WA) is living in the expectation that we are long overdue for something large-scale, Mount Rainier going volcanic being the most significant worry, then a damaging earthquake off the west coast or in Puget Sound. We had a rather minor one in Feb 2002 that still did quite a bit of damage in Seattle, and they get 5-6 on Richter scale tremors all the time near the coast. I've felt two myself in the 22 years we lived there. But it's "tick tock" on the Big One.

Something Shocking Happened in Florida After the Alaska Earthquake: Well Water Levels Changed
https://weather.com/news/news/2018-01-24-alaska-earthquake-florida-wells-shaking

Tuesday's 7.9 magnitude earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska sent vibrations through the earth that caused water to rise and fall in wells in Florida, thousands of miles away.

Sensors near Fort Lauderdale and Madison, near the Georgia border, showed a minor change in water levels after the earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

A water level rise from 41.59 feet to 41.77 feet was recorded at the well near Madison before it returned to normal. At the well near Fort Lauderdale, the water level fell from 1.42 feet to 1.31 feet.

Why did water levels in these wells some 3,800 miles away from the earthquake's epicenter change?

Vibrations that move through the earth called seismic waves are the culprit. Seismic waves are depicted by the upward and downward lines on seismographs used to detect earthquakes around the world.

"Water levels in wells respond to the seismic-wave induced expansion and contraction of the aquifer tapped by the well, in turn causing step or oscillatory fluid-pressure changes," the USGS says.

source

What Are Seismic Waves? - -> http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/waves.html

The response of well-aquifer systems to seismic waves - -> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ070i016p03915/abstract

Here is an example from a well in Virginia, note the spike on Jan 23