Alaska’s coast has been rocked by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3.
Early this morning, the earthquake caused a tsunami warning, which has subsequently been modified to a “advisory.”
People are urged to avoid swimming and going to the beach in the Eastern Aleutian Islands, the Alaskan Peninsula, and Kodiak Island.
The Aleutian Islands, the Alaskan Peninsula, and Cook Inlet regions all reported “widespread” earthquake tremors, according to the Alaska Earthquake Centre.
It was recorded at a relatively shallow depth of 3.8 miles (6km), 55 miles south-west of the tiny city of Sand Point.
The Alaskan branch of the US National Weather Service (NWS) tweeted: ‘Significant inundation is possible or already occurring.’
It urged people in the affected areas to ‘move inland to higher ground’.
An alert appears to have been sent to some residents of Anchorage, the largest city in the state, but NWS confirmed this was an ‘issue’ and the area was not affected.
Meanwhile, the Alaska Volcano Observatory said an ‘explosive’ eruption of the Aleutian volcano Shishaldin is continuing, and the Aviation Colour Code had been raised to red due to the extent of the ash cloud.
In a social media post, the observatory wrote: ‘A continuous ash plume now extends over 80 mi (125 km) to the SSE from the volcano with an altitude of about 16,000 ft (4.9 km) above sea level.
‘Seismicity has remained elevated for over 6 hours and frequent explosion signals are being detected at regional infrasound (pressure sensor) networks.
‘Some explosions are sending ash plumes as high as 20,000 ft (6 km) above sea level.’
The post stated that this morning’s earthquake was ‘not related to volcanic activity’.