Russia’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake spawned serious tsunami warnings, but waves have been moderate so far. Here’s the geological reason why

Eyewitness video captured tsunami waves flooding the small Russian town of Severo-Kurilsk on Wednesday morning.

The first tsunami waves landed on Russia’s Kuril Islands on the Kamchatka peninsula, which sits on the ‘Ring of Fire,’ an area of the Pacific with high seismic activity. Waves up to five metres in height were recorded off the Russian coast yesterday, and the earthquake also triggered an eruption of the Klyuchevskoy volcano, the largest in Eurasia.