26 December 2004
Full Moon, 100% lit
The wave that went round the world
A fault off Sumatra tore open for about ten minutes, the sea fell away from the beaches, and roughly 228,000 people died in fourteen countries.
It happened on the morning of a full moon, so the tide was already running high when the water arrived, and the sea kept ringing for days: tide gauges as far away as Nova Scotia picked it up. The fault slipped along some 1,300 kilometres, the longest rupture ever recorded.
- Date
- 26 December 2004
- Moon computed for
- 07:00 local time, UTC+7
- Phase
- Full Moon
- Illuminated
- 100%
Source: Lay et al., Science 308, 1127 (2005); NOAA tsunami event record