Royal Caribbean meteorologist shares latest tsunami info
A massive earthquake hit, and tsunami warnings were issued for parts of the Caribbean.
Cruisers and many cruise ports have been on high alert since a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck in the western Caribbean on Saturday, Feb. 8. That led to an alert being issued warning of a potential tsunami for the Cayman Islands as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
That advisory has since been cleared. The earthquake hit just after 6 p.m. about 130 miles south-southwest of George Town, Cayman Islands, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
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An "all clear" was later issued for Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, according to the Cayman Islands government's hazard management agency,
The National Weather Service (NWS) says the threat has passed as well.
"With the latest modeling and information, the tsunami threat has passed. There are no alerts posted for the United States or International Partners. The tsunami threat has passed. Unusual currents may be noticed in some areas. Exercise normal caution," the NWS shared on X, the former Twitter.
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Royal Caribbean meteorologist shares disturbing news
Royal Caribbean meteorologist Craig Setzer shared some disturbing news on his X page.
"Unfortunately, it appears that 5 of the 6 nearby DART buoys for tsunamis are not operational. "To ensure early detection of tsunamis and to acquire data critical to real-time forecasts, NOAA has placed Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART®) stations at sites in regions with a history of generating destructive tsunamis," he shared.
The one remaining buoy did share some useful data.
"Buoy 42409 in the central Gulf apparently recorded the 'shaking' as a series of deep water waves passed, but not tsunami waves. The other buoys all reporting "NO DAT," he wrote.
One of his followers asked why the buoys were not working.
"Looks like two drifted off their station, not sure about the others...," he answered.
No cruise ships have reported issues
Celebrity Summit was moored off Grand Cayman at the time of the earthquake. The ship was not expected to leave the area until 11:30 p.m.
Grand Cayman is a tender port, meaning the ship is not docked.
The ship appeared to be moving away from Grand Cayman as of 8:11 a.m,, according to CruiseMapper.
KHOU, a local news station out of Houston, had a story on the impact of the earthquake from Meteorologist Pat Cavlin
Yeah, so this is a really big earthquake. I just want to make that really clear to everyone. Seeing a number this big on the map is pretty significant.
Now, this originally came in as an 8.0 earthquake. As they've done some more research on this, they knocked it down to 7.6. It's still significant for this area. So this is where it was centered here again, just to the south and southwest of the Cayman Islands.
Here's Jamaica. This is Cuba up here. And because it happened right in the middle of the Caribbean Sea at a pretty shallow depth of only about seven kilometers, tsunami advisories had been posted for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but everywhere, including Mexico here up into the Yucatan and then down through places like Honduras and Belize and all of the Antilles up here, we'll all have to be on guard over the next few hours to see if any tsunami threat ends up materializing.
All alerts have been lifted. A number of cruisers took to social media to say their ships were experiencing rough seas, but nothing more.
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