Tsunami warnings were lifted Wednesday afternoon after surging waves hit California around 1am, according to the National Weather Service, the result of a powerful earthquake off Russia’s eastern coast. The initial waves were 4.5 feet, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Tide gauges recorded tsunami waves along the Northern California coast, including in San Francisco and Monterey, according to the Weather Service.

The service had issued an upgraded tsunami warning Tuesday night for a 100-mile stretch of Northern California’s coastline, between Cape Mendocino and the border with Oregon, after a rare 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck.

A tsunami warning means that dangerous coastal flooding and powerful currents are possible and may continue for several hours or days.

Weather officials had warned that waves up to five and a half feet high were expected to reach the coast at Crescent City in Northern California, about 20 miles south of the Oregon border. The Weather Service urged residents in the warning zone to move inland.

That stretch of the Northern California coastline has frequently experienced tsunamis over the past century.

Crescent City, which has fewer than 7,000 residents, was particularly vulnerable to tsunamis because of its low elevation on land that juts out into the sea. A wave of 3.6 feet was recorded at 1:44 a.m. Pacific time in the city, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Since 1933, 32 tsunamis have reached the city. Five caused damage, according to a city website, and a tsunami in 1964 killed 11 people and destroyed 29 city blocks, a county website said.

Lori Dengler, an emeritus professor of geology at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, said that the city was in the process of “an orderly evacuation of the commercial fishing fleet” on Tuesday evening.

Nearly the entire rest of the West Coast was under a tsunami advisory, a lower-level alert, meaning that flooding of beaches and harbor areas was possible but that widespread inundation was not expected.

Most of California’s coastline was expected to experience waves of less than two feet. On the central coast, the San Luis Obispo County Fire Department issued an evacuation warning for some homes near the water, as of midnight on Wednesday.

Mary Ellen Carroll, the executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, said the waves there were expected to be only one foot high but that they could still pose a danger because of strong riptides and currents.

And the National Weather Service said on social media that “a one-foot wave can have an incredible amount of energy.”

Carroll said she was generally not concerned — except for those who ignore guidance to stay out of the water.

“We want to make sure swimmers, surfers, kite surfers, all those folks get on shore and stay off the beaches,” she said, adding that port officials were warning people who live on houseboats near the Giants ballpark to be ready to leave if necessary.