Major Earthquake in the Pacific

I’ve got a running feed of earthquakes all over the world that are measured at 5.0 or greater on the Richter scale.  Most days see five or six or fifteen relatively small quakes along well known faultlines, but this morning, less than an hour ago, there was a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in Tonga, islands east of Australia.  It was a shallow earthquake (less than 20 km deep) and as of yet there are no reports of tsunamis generated by the quake, although the US Geological Survey does say that this type of earthquake is the type known to generate them.  I’ll be watching to see what the fallout is from this, and I’m sure there’ll be several fairly large aftershocks as well.

UPDATE:  Here’s an article from Reuters World News Service about the quake.  It did indeed generate a tsunami, but no reports of damage have been received.