No Tsunami & Albatrosses are Back

You may have heard that there was a couple of big earthquakes off the coast of British Columbia, and that there was a major evacuation in Hawaii for a possible tsunami.  We got the word out here too, so it was an evening of moving heavy equipment to high ground and waiting on the 3rd floor of Charlie Barracks.  We had the news playing on TV, and were watching our tide gauge data online.  We don't have direct access, so we just had to watch it on the NOAA website.  We got the all clear about 12:30 pm and all got to go home.  As you can see by the screen capture below, we really didn't get much.  I checked a few of the beaches today, and there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary, which was alright with me. 

Here is the data from the tide station, taken from NOAA's web page:

 http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/data_menu.shtml?stn=1619910 Sand Island, Midway Islands, USA&type=Tide Data

You can see the variation after 08:00 on the chart.  You can click on it and make it bigger.

 The island population waited in the hallway and rooms of Charlie Barracks.  The emergency lights were only on shortly while the generators were swapped.  We had power for most of the wait.

 This is the NOAA tide station out at the end of the harbor.  It's just the 2 white tubes and the little shed.

 I forgot to mention last week that the Black-footed albatrosses started coming back.  There aren't too many of them around yet, but there will be soon.  The Laysan albatross have not returned yet.

 No special story with this photo, I just liked the bird in the Sweet Alyssum.

Here's a screen capture from Google Maps.  As I mentioned last week, you can go in the garage at the office.  You can also go into the Transportation building.  It's cool to play around with if you have the bandwidth, which I really don't.  You can make this photo a bit bigger by clicking on it, or just look at Google Maps.