Waves of 4ft (1.2m) have already hit Hawaii on the coast of Oahu, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre.
The US Tsunami Warning System sets out the warning zones (Image: United States Department of Commerce)
Tsunami warnings and alerts have been issued to the entire Pacific region following a huge 8.8 magnitude earthquake on the east coast of Russia. Warnings and alerts are in place across Japan, the US, Hawaii, Alaska and the Philippines, and large waves have already hit Hawaii, Russia and Japan.
According to the US government Tsunami warning service, a warning is in place for Hawaii which is directly in line from the epicentre of the earthquake in east-southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In Hawaii, residents have been desperately trying to evacuate after being instructed to move to higher ground. A wave of 4ft (1.2m) has already hit the coast of Oahu, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre.
A tsunami map shows the approximate time that waves will hit (Image: NCEI Tsunami Map)
Twelve minutes were recorded between each wave, as Josh Green, the governor of Hawaii, said the island was yet to see a “wave of consequence”.
The US warning map system has placed the West Coast of the US at the Oregon-California Border, Cape Mendocino, under a red warning.
Dozens of other regions are under a purple ‘threat’ level according to the warning map, including parts of East Asia such as Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, which it predicts could be hit by waves between one and three metres.
All Pacific Islands, including Fiji, Samoa, and French Polynesia, are also at risk of waves up to three metres according to the warning system.
The map predicts the west coast of South America, including Peru, Chile, and Colombia, is under threat of waves between one and three metres.
The warning system has placed Ecuador under a higher alert with waves larger than three metres, while in Central America, all countries including Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Guatemala are at risk of waves between 0.3 and three metres.
The west coast of the United States has also been put under advisory alerts by the tsunami warning system.
A tsunami map for the National Centres of Environmental Information shows the estimated time that the waves will hit after the epicentre of the earthquake, which struck at 00:25am BS (08.25am JST).
It shows waves could reach parts of Australia and the US west coast ten hours after the earthquake, while parts of the Pacific Ocean were predicted to be hit between five and ten hours afterwards.
There have already been waves of up to four metres in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, and tsunamis have already struck Japan’s large northern island of Hokkaido.
Meteorologists have warned that the earthquake was extremely shallow at just 13 miles deep in the ocean, which has led to such widespread warnings.
