Quake Watch 2017

a reply to: radpeteage

659
WEPA40 PHEB 220503
TSUPAC

TSUNAMI MESSAGE NUMBER 3
NWS PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER EWA BEACH HI
0458 UTC SUN JAN 22 2017

...PTWC TSUNAMI THREAT MESSAGE...


**** NOTICE **** NOTICE **** NOTICE **** NOTICE **** NOTICE *****

THIS MESSAGE IS ISSUED FOR INFORMATION ONLY IN SUPPORT OF THE
UNESCO/IOC PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING AND MITIGATION SYSTEM AND IS
MEANT FOR NATIONAL AUTHORITIES IN EACH COUNTRY OF THAT SYSTEM.

NATIONAL AUTHORITIES WILL DETERMINE THE APPROPRIATE LEVEL OF
ALERT FOR EACH COUNTRY AND MAY ISSUE ADDITIONAL OR MORE REFINED
INFORMATION.

**** NOTICE **** NOTICE **** NOTICE **** NOTICE **** NOTICE *****

THE TSUNAMI FORECAST IS UPDATED IN THIS MESSAGE.

NOTE EARTHQUAKE MAGNITUDE DOWNGRADED.

PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS
---------------------------------

* MAGNITUDE 7.9
* ORIGIN TIME 0430 UTC JAN 22 2017
* COORDINATES 6.1 SOUTH 155.2 EAST
* DEPTH 168 KM / 104 MILES
* LOCATION SOLOMON ISLANDS


EVALUATION
----------

* AN EARTHQUAKE WITH A PRELIMINARY MAGNITUDE OF 7.9 OCCURRED IN
THE SOLOMON ISLANDS AT 0430 UTC ON SUNDAY JANUARY 22 2017.

* BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA... HAZARDOUS TSUNAMI WAVES ARE
FORECAST FOR SOME COASTS.


TSUNAMI THREAT FORECAST...UPDATED
---------------------------------

* TSUNAMI WAVES REACHING 0.3 TO 1 METERS ABOVE THE TIDE LEVEL
ARE POSSIBLE FOR SOME COASTS OF

SOLOMON ISLANDS AND PAPUA NEW GUINEA.


* TSUNAMI WAVES ARE FORECAST TO BE LESS THAN 0.3 METERS ABOVE
THE TIDE LEVEL FOR THE COASTS OF

AMERICAN SAMOA... AUSTRALIA... CHUUK... COOK ISLANDS...
FIJI... FRENCH POLYNESIA... GUAM... HAWAII... HOWLAND AND
BAKER... INDONESIA... JARVIS ISLAND... JOHNSTON ATOLL...
KIRIBATI... KOSRAE... MARSHALL ISLANDS... NAURU... NEW
CALEDONIA... NEW ZEALAND... NORTHERN MARIANAS...
NORTHWESTERN HAWAIIAN ISLANDS... PALAU... PALMYRA
ISLAND... POHNPEI... SAMOA......
TOKELAU... TONGA... TUVALU... VANUATU... WAKE ISLAND...
WALLIS AND FUTUNA... AND YAP.


* ACTUAL AMPLITUDES AT THE COAST MAY VARY FROM FORECAST
AMPLITUDES DUE TO UNCERTAINTIES IN THE FORECAST AND LOCAL
FEATURES. IN PARTICULAR MAXIMUM TSUNAMI AMPLITUDES ON ATOLLS
AND AT LOCATIONS WITH FRINGING OR BARRIER REEFS WILL LIKELY
BE MUCH SMALLER THAN THE FORECAST INDICATES.

* FOR OTHER AREAS COVERED BY THIS PRODUCT A FORECAST HAS NOT
YET BEEN COMPUTED. THE FORECAST WILL BE EXPANDED IF
NECESSARY IN SUBSEQUENT PRODUCTS.


RECOMMENDED ACTIONS
-------------------

* GOVERNMENT AGENCIES RESPONSIBLE FOR THREATENED COASTAL AREAS
SHOULD TAKE ACTION TO INFORM AND INSTRUCT ANY COASTAL
POPULATIONS AT RISK IN ACCORDANCE WITH THEIR OWN
EVALUATION... PROCEDURES AND THE LEVEL OF THREAT.

* PERSONS LOCATED IN THREATENED COASTAL AREAS SHOULD STAY ALERT
FOR INFORMATION AND FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS FROM NATIONAL AND
LOCAL AUTHORITIES.


ESTIMATED TIMES OF ARRIVAL
--------------------------

* ESTIMATED TIMES OF ARRIVAL -ETA- OF THE INITIAL TSUNAMI WAVE
FOR PLACES WITHIN THREATENED REGIONS ARE GIVEN BELOW. ACTUAL
ARRIVAL TIMES MAY DIFFER AND THE INITIAL WAVE MAY NOT BE THE
LARGEST. A TSUNAMI IS A SERIES OF WAVES AND THE TIME BETWEEN
WAVES CAN BE FIVE MINUTES TO ONE HOUR.

LOCATION REGION COORDINATES ETA(UTC)
------------------------------------------------------------
KIETA PAPUA NEW GUINEA 6.1S 155.6E 0440 01/22
AMUN PAPUA NEW GUINEA 6.0S 154.7E 0518 01/22
FALAMAE SOLOMON ISLANDS 7.4S 155.6E 0526 01/22


POTENTIAL IMPACTS
-----------------

* A TSUNAMI IS A SERIES OF WAVES. THE TIME BETWEEN WAVE CRESTS
CAN VARY FROM 5 MINUTES TO AN HOUR. THE HAZARD MAY PERSIST
FOR MANY HOURS OR LONGER AFTER THE INITIAL WAVE.

* IMPACTS CAN VARY SIGNIFICANTLY FROM ONE SECTION OF COAST TO
THE NEXT DUE TO LOCAL BATHYMETRY AND THE SHAPE AND ELEVATION
OF THE SHORELINE.

* IMPACTS CAN ALSO VARY DEPENDING UPON THE STATE OF THE TIDE AT
THE TIME OF THE MAXIMUM TSUNAMI WAVES.

* PERSONS CAUGHT IN THE WATER OF A TSUNAMI MAY DROWN... BE
CRUSHED BY DEBRIS IN THE WATER... OR BE SWEPT OUT TO SEA.


NEXT UPDATE AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
--------------------------------------

* THE NEXT MESSAGE WILL BE ISSUED IN ONE HOUR... OR SOONER IF
THE SITUATION WARRANTS.

* AUTHORITATIVE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EARTHQUAKE FROM THE U.S.
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CAN BE FOUND ON THE INTERNET AT
EARTHQUAKE.USGS.GOV/EARTHQUAKES -ALL LOWER CASE-.

* FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THIS EVENT MAY BE FOUND AT
PTWC.WEATHER.GOV AND AT WWW.TSUNAMI.GOV.

* COASTAL REGIONS OF HAWAII... AMERICAN SAMOA... GUAM... AND
CNMI SHOULD REFER TO PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER MESSAGES
SPECIFICALLY FOR THOSE PLACES THAT CAN BE FOUND AT
PTWC.WEATHER.GOV.

* COASTAL REGIONS OF CALIFORNIA... OREGON... WASHINGTON...
BRITISH COLUMBIA AND ALASKA SHOULD ONLY REFER TO U.S.
NATIONAL TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER MESSAGES THAT CAN BE FOUND
AT NTWC.ARH.NOAA.GOV.

$$

Pacific Tsunami Center

Hoping for the safety of all people in the areas affected.

Sorry for not linking more info in my last post..I'm working on that.

a reply to: radpeteage
No worries, because there is nothing to report, it was under land Bougainville Island
so say GDACS, the place where I get those tsunami animations

Summary
Current impact estimate:
The earthquake was not tsunamogenic. No calculations were performed.
Green alert in Papua New Guinea on 22/01/2017 04:30:23 UTC
142212 people within 100km
Magnitude 7.9M, Depth:136km

www.gdacs.org...

Big one though

Honiara graph LISS (good for 24 hrs)

hopefully no endangered Bougainville Monkey-faced Flying Foxes were injured

Got lucky with no tsunami, given the size.

a reply to: AlexanderM
Yeah for sure.
I was saying to the other half when I seen this quake 4 hours after it happened, we were lucky there was no Tsunami because we were watching the Aussie Open tennis on TV during that time, and there were no warnings come up or even a notice that a major quake had happened in our region(SkyTV are not renowned for their public service in NZ let alone AuSky)
we would have been under water by then.

Even after the Nov 2016 Culverden 7.8 here the politicians (both at a national and regional level) are still twiddling their thumbs about setting up a tsunami warning system here in NZ, each saying it is the others job to set it up.
Talk is of a cell phone text alert system, but they are worried about "privacy issues" as you would have to register to get the app. What the #^@% is wrong with these people?
the choice is give out your phone number or die in a tsunami???
geezus christopher

Welp, since we're congregating in here now, I'll just add that yesterday MAINE had one:

hisz.rsoe.hu...

(Maine?!? Wha-??)

Also...I have less education about "Oz Quakes" than Muzzy et al, but it seems like this EQ, super south of Australia seems out of place, or something to keep our eye on....

hisz.rsoe.hu...




One side note, that is a theory I am "working on": After realizing our EQs seem to "ping pong" back and forth across the Pacifica Plate, I tried to start making notes of EXACTLY where on the western edge of the PP an EQ would hit that is a precursor to EQs on our Cali Coast. I could be wrong, but it seems that the one part of the PPlate that rings out JUST BEFORE Cali coasts, is right where Indonesia, Singapore, & Taiwain sit, making a "letter C" (from our satellite's view). It seems like every other part of the Western PPlate can be hit with EQs, and they will ricochet off to the eastern side....but specifically....it seems I only need to be concerned about this "C" area I speak of...as it seems that part of the plate has less "slack" for jerking away from our coast without us feeling an EQ too.


I hope and pray that my singular cup of coffee has allowed me to accurately and clearly explain my theory.

a reply to: HollywoodFarmGirl

I love word games! OZ for Australia!!

a reply to: HollywoodFarmGirl
I hadn't noticed that. What Californian quakes are you corresponding with? there haven't been any big ones for a long time.

The C you refer to has a lot of smaller Tectonic plates inside it, apart from the main Asia/Indo-Australia margin to the north.
This map shows them
upload.wikimedia.org...

with all those plate jostling for position you can expect a lot of earthquakes

If you are referring to the Juan Fuca quakes a little while back, again a sub-plate
it's a bit like the big Pacific Plate is spreading out in all directions, "hey give me some elbow room here" and pushes the little guys out the way, on both sides of the ocean.

a reply to: HollywoodFarmGirl

Also...I have less education about "Oz Quakes" than Muzzy et al, but it seems like this EQ, super south of Australia seems out of place, or something to keep our eye on.... hisz.rsoe.hu...

Those happen on occasions. Nothing strange at all.

P

a reply to: muzzy

Ah, you ask "what EQs I am referring to", w/ regards to Cali Quakes being tied to .... "The C" (a bunch of little freckles of tectonic plates, apparently, thank you Professor Muzzy), I'm not talking about our somewhat routine hiccups of 1s & 2s, (that's prolly just my own digestive track), but the somewhat larger ones/"super swarms". Like when the Baltic Sea punched up a bunch last year, that recent Hawthorne NV swarm.... Ya know. Nothing YUGE or BIGLY... But like I said....I'm just hoping to pick up some rhythm of Mother Earth, so that when she does a "Ping" in one spot, I'll know to grab my kids and get ready for the "Pong" in mine.


Interesting, though. What you said about the fragmented little plate parts that seem to be in the area of my "C/Ping". I've got so much to learn!!



Editing to add in here: HOLY SMOKES!!! I had no idea so many tiny little plates are jammed into that spot. I see what you mean about there not being much elbow room to move without immediately affecting surrounding plates. This area now kinda reminds of what it's like in subways during Rush Hour in Japan...


So can I assume there's as much pressure applied in this (not really) parallel scenario? Like, is there a difference in "neighboring pressure" between these fragmented plates, and say, where Juan de Fuca fault pushes against the North American plate? Does the pressure grow exponentially, depending on how many faults would be triggered at any one point? And could we guess if there would be more or less "pressure" from surrounding plates when there are numerous ones, such as this "C" area, versus big expansive plates like Pacifica and North American?

I'm not sure if I really am understanding this back and forth.

BUT I WILL TELL YOU THIS!!!!!!

This is a serious Thread. And the folks who post here are serious.

I am sorry if "I" got a little giddy. And gave you all the wrong idea. I truely apologize.

No jokes here. You get the real thing.

Thank you Muzzy.

I am sorry I tried to be funny in this thread. Bad Move on my part.

a reply to: HollywoodFarmGirl
One thing people often forget (including me) is the ancient Farallon Plate that has been pushed under the North American Plate (the dark shadow on the Plate Map, Gorda-California-Nevada)
this could account for a lot of the weird earthquake activity we see from time to time in Nevada, and Yellowstone

so where did Farallon go?

some light reading for you
Slabs of ancient tectonic plate still lodged under California
Juan de Fuca, Gorda, and Explorer plates
Ancient tectonic plate blocks magma plume at Yellowstone, simulation shows

Intensity moderate
Region intensity moderate
NZDT Mon, Jan 23 2017, 10:00:16 am
Depth 40 km
Magnitude 5.0
Location 15 km west of Te Kaha
www.geonet.org.nz...

a reply to: crappiekat
Whatyatalkingabout?
I missed something?
The comment about the inauguration?
ha no one took the bait

a reply to: muzzy

Oh, my. A reading list. This is delicious, thank you thank you thank you!!!

Another crappy Summers day here, it's as bad as Winter was except it is not cold.
With time on my hands I thought I would start reprocessing the Significant World EQ (6.5+project) files to prepare for the Dropbox dropout in November. I have to change the icons and save the KMZ file in a different section of Dropbox.
First problem is I couldn't get ikimaps to open off several of the blog pages.
Did get it to work in the end after 4 attempts and deleting cookies from Firefox.
What a PITA, I'm sure that will put readers off if they have to do that. Once one map opens it seems OK and others will open also.
So as I'm doing this I might as well add in the IRIS energy readings as well, they have calculated quite a lot of them going back to the 1950s at least. These are the Me_bb (broadband) and Me_hf (high frequency) readings.
I have already tried to offer up to 6 Magnitude readings per event, from whatever reliable networks offered them, at least Mww, Mwp, Mw, Ms, ML and mb if they are available.
Now this will take it to 8.
The first years maps will start to appear this afternoon, working back from 2017.
That is if ikimaps keeps working, I believe their servers are in Spain.

more about: muzzy
I got 3 done.

The new files show as round icons on the home page thumbs.
I got way laid with the tsunami data, I can make my own tsunami map showing the arrival heights and delay.
Not sure if it is practical yet.

I picked a quake witha tsunami at random, a 6.7 16/2/2015 Near East Coast Of Honshu, Japan and ran the GPS over it.
I couldn't find a decent tsunami wave icon, so I made my own
there are left hand and right hand versions, depending on the coast, the colours similar to the code for earthquakes aqua -0,01m, green=0.02m, grey=0.03m etc. I'm not sure what to do when there is a tsunami over 1m, maybe I'll just make them bigger?
It is shown as an interactive map on the 2015 page

here is a screenshot in Open Street Maps view similar to Google Maps (don't forget on NZ Topo Maps that when its is away from New Zealand you have to use the slider for Google Map or Satellite view)

a reply to: muzzy

That should be aqua=0.1m etc not 0.01m
I'm going to have a go at the next one on the 2015 list that had a tsunami, 29/3 New Britain Region M 7.5, it had some 0.5m waves, so there will be multicolored icons on that one.

later:

This one was a bit more complicated.
Tsunami hitting both west and east coasts of various islands, I started by splitting the data by Longitude and putting the left hand and right hand wave crests accordingly, but still had to change a few manually especially around Duke of York island and the west coast and east of New Ireland (which fell into the right hand crest icon range by Longitude. (finger on maps shows direction of the tsunami wave against the coasts.


closer view around Duke of York Is


The GDACS lat/long locations are a bit loose, only two decimal points at tbest, only one decimal ina few cases, so the closer you zoom in the more inacurate the locations get. Take for example Rakandakanda, SW of Rabaul, it has a reading of 0.4m wave height, but my Google Earth elevation shows to be 351m above sea level and 4.3km inland.
But I guess its good enough, presumably they mean the nearest beach or river to xyz location.

This tsunami map thing is quite fun, but I wonder how slow the page is going to load if there are 10 or so maps on each years page?
I have added a clickable text link to the Google Earth files as well, in case the earthquake ikimap won't load, and in the case of the tsunami maps it is more helpful to see the delay (arrival) times. The NZ topo map is OK to see the heights at a glance (colours) but it takes a bit of clicking to get a sense of where the tsunami hit first.
This is where the demise of the interactive Google Maps and Bing Maps was such a dissapointment for me, as they both had side lists that you could click on to get the popup tag to open on the map itself. At this time I have sorted the locations by height, smallest to largest, or I could sort by delay, but if the reader is using GE they can see the heights on the GE Globe anyway.

The New Britain PNG one is interesting if you look at the delay times, the heights tend to show where there are bays is where the heights are highest, which I suppose is to be expected,
the heights at Wide Bay (at Kaubademki 0.5m) and (Lamerien 0.4m) and Rabaul Bay, ( at Rabaul, Matupit_Number_1, Kuraip, Karavia_Number_1 etc 0.4) show this, whereas at the entrance to Rabaul Bay along Blance Bay, Kabagap to Vunatagia the waves were only half, 0.2m

The delay times are interesting too, obviously locations close to the earthquake got hit first, Gar to Karong on the New Britain coast to the SW only had 2 minutes warning, as did Lambur, Lamassa_Hamlets and Lamassa on New Irelands West coast to the E. The open coastline delays are way shorter than in the bays, which might indicate 2nd or 3rd waves (38-44min in Wide Bay and 54 min in Rabaul Bay)

I have been working on processing GPS data for Cook Strait (my area) for a few weeks, making daily maps with arrows showing the movement up and down N,S,E,W, we are only talking about 1mm-2mm movement per day, it is not really significant, and very labourious to do making a seperate icon (arrow cluster) for each location.
Here is what I have done so far.
gpsrealizations.wordpress.com...
I do think these tsunami maps are more fun to do, and maybe more interesting due to the more varied locations. I'll probably work on those rather than the GPS.

I've made a few modifications to the way the tsunami reports work.
Instead of putting all the maps on one page I have taken an old blog that no longer functions due to google maps malfunction in 2015, changed the name deleted all the old posts and will put them on there.
To tie the 2 blogs together the link for each event will show on the years list with "tsunami report" in blue (active link). Clicking on those words will take you to the other blog page relevant to that event.

if you just want to see tsunami maps
significanteqtsunamis.blogspot.co.nz...
2015 is the only one that has links just now, I had to go to work today (and the next 2 days)
significantearthquakes.blogspot.co.nz...

I'll shut up now and get on with the reports