“Surging water generated from the powerful earthquake off Japan’s coast hit the California coastline Friday morning, capsizing boats, splintering docks and panicking thousands of seaside spectators from Eureka to Santa Cruz who had expected a mild amusement but were sent scrambling to higher ground.

One person taking pictures along the Klamath River in far Northern California was swept away and was still missing Friday afternoon, while emergency crews in Oregon rescued a handful of others from the water.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday declared a state of emergency for Del Norte, Humboldt, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties.

In the Bay Area, Santa Cruz Harbor took the worst of the tsunami; $15 million in damage was caused by two separate series of thick, rolling surges, the first about 8 a.m. and the second at 11:15 a.m.“

This is from today’s front page of San Jose Mercury News.

Video clips of the tsunami that I saw on NYT’s webpage left me speechless. Much like the 9/11 videos, I kept replaying them, over and over again. The way the water races past the airport gates on the runway of Sendai airport, the way the water with cars looking like fish pools before it swirls over the embankment onto the highway, a gargantuan whirlpool with a few ships stuck in the outer reaches of its swirl. I haven’t seen anything so shockingly powerful in a long time. The power that is latent in the natural world just stuns me.

This picture (courtesy Mother Jones, but can be seen in many other places) of the forecast of the ripples from the tsunami touching the different parts of the globe, I found just beautiful. How small the world seems.

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