Earthquakes

[Turtle]

___Again last evening (Pacific ttime) another moderate quake on the West coast. Quite a series now for the last few days.

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/

 

I highly recommend viewing the many regional seismograms; it is always interesting to note the different arrival times & magnitude registered at different locations for individual quakes. :rant:

[bumab]

It has been an interesing couple of days all around the Pacific Rim. Locally, earthquakes can trigger other earthquakes (obviously) in the same area. I wonder if a large e-quake, like the one in Chile a few days ago perhaps, could trigger other ones on the same plate, but further away? Of this is a statistical anomoly.

 

Did the Sumatra Quake seem to coincide with any other large quakes around the world? I didn't hear of any, but the news and web were pretty taken with the tsunami.

[Turtle]

___Quite the multitude of quakes these last few days in my area. Alarge deep quake in Montana yesterday continues with aftershocks & a 3.0 something today a few leagues from Jackson Wyoming. (Yellowstone supervolcano area)

___There is a rogue earthquake predicting geologist who uses the Moons phases to predict quakes. Find him at http://www.syzygyjob.com/ Very interesting approach.

[Turtle]

___Just woke to find the Montana swarm is persisting; a 3.8 just half an hour ago.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/Maps/US2/44.46.-114.-112.html

[Turtle]

___I'm sitting here feeling a 2.0 or so quake & it's a little like a vertigo feeling as if you stood on top of a 10 foot high piece of firm gelatine & it may be a bit bigger because I feel a pressure in my temples a bit & of course my gizzard is knotted. Anyway, maybe an interesting science experiment would be to plot my post rate/content/timing/etc. against the St. Helens seismograph data. I expect a strong correlation. Good project for some ambitious student.

___Ahhh the distraction of writing!

[Turtle]

___I wnet back & checked the seismograms on St. Helens for the time 2:27 to look for the correlation I suggested. No 2.0 near that time, so I grossly overestimated the magnitude. That left the microquakes well below1.0 which occur every minute or so as the dome builds. I am about 50 miles distant, so at the speed of sound in air that's about a 6 minute delay; the delay through the ground is less, but it depends on the rocks for an exact value. Anyway, reasonably a 4 minute delay, & there is no pinning this on a certain trace this time.

___When I'm on my feet or moving around much, I don't feel the shaking; when I sit still it is quite apparent,

___The Montana swarm continued today; maybe it's the new Yellowstone!?

[Queso]

i miss the earthquakes.

[Buffy]

i miss the earthquakes.

I can imagine. Even here in the Bay Area, their matches are only broadcast on one of the local Spanish language radio stations. They have a web site though. Check out:

 

http://sanjose.earthquakes.mlsnet.com/MLS/sje/index.jsp

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Queso]

hah, i'm not a fan of sports. i totally forgot about the san jose earthquakes (my home town!) but that just goes to show how much i really give a damn about sports.

i meant those random shifts of the earths plates that make me wonder who's pushing me only to find it was nobody.

[Queso]

:)

[Buffy]

...i meant those random shifts of the earths plates that make me wonder who's pushing me only to find it was nobody.

Now, you've GOT to stop letting people push you around Orby! On the other hand, it lets me get away with these "tongue fully implanted in cheek" responses without resorting to smilies... :)

 

The Long Valley Caldera (south of Mono Lake in Eastern CA) was unusually quiet while we were nearby recently. That's not necessarily a good thing, but we too, "missed the earthquakes". Normally you get one almost every week that you can feel up there....

 

All Shook Up,

Buffy

[Turtle]

___I visited Long Valley years ago on a geology course trip; for those who don't know it is a super volcano caldera the same as Yellowstone. It has hotsprings & mudpots & an alkeline (is that right?) lake & a new escape road labled "scenic drive" & no end of geologic wonders. The quiet before the storm Buff? :circle:

[Buffy]

___I visited Long Valley years ago on a geology course trip; for those who don't know it is a super volcano caldera the same as Yellowstone. It has hotsprings & mudpots & an alkeline (is that right?) lake & a new escape road labled "scenic drive" & no end of geologic wonders. The quiet before the storm Buff? :circle:

The Mono-Mammoth area (only the geologists call it "Long Valley") is a facinating geological area. John McPhee has written some about it too, although I don't have any of his books handy for the reference. Mono Lake, and what used to be Owens Lake, are/were alkaline, but only thanks to William Mulholland and the Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power, who figured out how to turn a huge lush valley into a desert.... Actually Mono does have a reason for being alkaline: its a "dead end" lake, that has no outlets, so it only evaporates, and in combination with the natural deposits of sodium chloride in the surrounding geological features, does become salty...

 

Other geological features of note are the Mono Craters which are very visible from highway 395 south of Mono Lake, Hot Creek which is a hot spring that in certain fenced off areas is too hot for human consumption (so hot it kills off *all* bacteria and other living organisms and has this eerie blue hue that looks like some other planet), and my favorite Obsidian Dome--known to the locals as "Glass Mountain"--that's this huge outcrop of ingeous rock.

 

Oh the "Mammoth Scenic Loop" has been there forever, and would be useful as an "escape route" but only in the sense that the folks on Mt St. Helens had time to escape... Its got lots of campgrounds on it and some really outrageous snowmobiling territory off of it. Don't believe the conspiracy theorists: I've got friends who have family roots that go back more than a century, and the "escape" that most of them used it for was on expeditions to blow up the aquaduct....another piece of facinating folklore, but way off topic...

 

Looks like the USGS is redoing the site that covers this geological wonder in the next month, so keep checking here: http://lvo.wr.usgs.gov/

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Turtle]

___Great post Buff; I missed your great posts. I was going to mention the obsidian, but we studied so many other places on the trip I didn't remember for sure that Long Valley is the location. Quite the interesting sound it makes walking over boulders of glass. :eek: I think calling the scenic drive "escape route" is my professors tounge in cheeck cynicism poking through. :circle: Mono Lake is very salty indeed, but not dead; it is full of brine shrimp.

___On my post on the Montana "swarm", I e-mailed a geologist at the Earthquake Studies Office for Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology; he says these events constitute a main shock/aftershock sequence & not a swarm, making the distinction that in a swarm, the biggest event isn't usually first. Checking today, the sequence seems to have settled down.

___ :rant:

[Buffy]

Mono Lake is very salty indeed, but not dead; it is full of brine shrimp.

Didn't say dead. The area *abounds* in facinating life forms: my daughter spent an hour chasing the swarms of sand flies on the beach at the South Tufa last month! It is a "dead end" though, as it does not have a river outlet....other than LA sucking it into the aquaduct....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Turtle]

___On my post on the Montana "swarm", I e-mailed a geologist at the Earthquake Studies Office for Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology; he says these events constitute a main shock/aftershock sequence & not a swarm, making the distinction that in a swarm, the biggest event isn't usually first. Checking today, the sequence seems to have settled down.

___ :hihi:

 

I spoke too soon; the Montana sequence is active today:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/Maps/US10/37.47.-115.-105.html

[Turtle]

___Another moderate quake (3.4) at the Montana site. This all started with a 5.6 if I remember correctly. As Tormod points out in starting this thread, earthquake prediction remains beyond our grasp.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/Quakes/usbhag.htm