On July 29, 2025, at 23:24 Universal Time, a long stretch of seafloor off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula was thrust upward. The magnitude 8.8 earthquake was the largest on Earth since the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and within minutes a tsunami was spreading acr oss the Pacific. Warnings went out from Japan to Chile. On Shumshu, in the Kuril Islands, the water splashed up to about 19 meters (62 feet) high. ...read more read less