Swarm of earthquakes detected off Oregon (600 in 10 days)

By JEFF BARNARD

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area.

There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.

Earthquake Swarm AP Link

I'm not a geologist, but this seems pretty strange. Either there's an unknown volcano yet to be discovered or it may be something bigger.

What do the experts here think?

[edit on 11-4-2008 by verylowfrequency]

I just watched that corny show "10.5: Apocolypse" on Sci-Fi. It was 4 hours, and i had it on DVR, so i took a few days to watch it.

That is the extent of my knowledge. But 600 in 10 days seems pretty out of the ordinary. Perhaps i am incorrect.

reply to post by verylowfrequency


The more earthquakes the better. Energy has to be released frequently for a balance to be obtained. The less earthquakes near an active fault line, the bigger the next earthquake would be. Nothing to worry about here.

Oh and my work is part of the Joint Tsunami warning centre, so we send out tsunami warnings if needed (for the Oz area)

Here's an interesting link too

earthquake.usgs.gov...

reply to post by OzWeatherman


I see. So, you saying by having many like this it negates having one big more destructive one. That makes sense, thanks.

Originally posted by verylowfrequency
reply to post by OzWeatherman

 

I see. So, you saying by having many like this it negates having one big more destructive one. That makes sense, thanks.

Exactly, its all about the build up of energy

Hope that link helps.....it updates regularly, surprising how many earthquakes occur every day, even if they are small

I posted on this thread, www.abovetopsecret.com... , a month ago about the very vivid dreams I have been having of the Oregon coast.

The dreams have not gone away, and they are the same over and over.

I would rather dream of lotto numbers and have them come true.. but not this.

My fingers are still crossed.

Just wanted to say that I have been following these quake swarms with a usgs googleearth plugin... been very interesting to say the least..
But to make the statement that these quakes are good cause they release energy and avoid the big one... sorry, that's not accurate at all.
like they said in the article, it's a precursor to something big like an eruption.. every time an earthquake pops off in that region, it adds pressure to the plates involved.

so far there have been big swarms in the salton sea/mexico area... that area of wells, nv... yellow stone and now they have made there way up here..
and soon we in the pacnorthwest will be in a time where the plates start to slip backwards for a few months.. periodic slip I think it's called.

anyways.. very cool and interesting stuff for sure!

I've heard that off shore in the Pacific is over due for a repeat of what happened in 1700. It would take out coastal towns in at least 3 States, and the wave would hit Japan.

I have been doing some earthquake watching in the UK recently and the ground feels wobbly since the major one of Feb 27 this year. I look at the BGS site for online readings and I find that a there is a a lot of disturbance in the very long frequency readings but no so bad in the low end. What does that mean, does that mean low frequency reading is not a problem.

I wrote to the BGS site and they said it was only natural noise disturbances.
But I looked again and all the Local siesmology reading all over the UK has major frequency disturbances so it can not be local traffic or anything. I only look if I feel like the ground is feeling weired or wobbling a bit and everytime I do I see the readings up.

9 April reading using long wave detection.
www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk...

12 April
www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk...

Then again it must mean its very faint quakes that the UK gets about 200 a year anyway. Or are we on to a larger quake or is the energy being dispersed in a healty way?

Don't jump on me (or do) for mentioning this, but if they're getting something they've never recorded before, could it be possible this is a manifestation of HAARP? I know this is not the Conspiracy forum, but I thought I would interject that possibility here as it seems most appropriate here...

At least I think it should be considered, whether discarded or not.

Originally posted by pynner

But to make the statement that these quakes are good cause they release energy and avoid the big one... sorry, that's not accurate at all.

I can admit that I am wrong on THIS occasion and you are right. It is an unusual situation as the tremors resemble volcanic seismic activity rather than plate tectonic activity.

It should be noted however that there are hundreds of earth tremors and small earthquakes daily, my place of employment sends out Tsunami warnings for the Australian area. So we do monitor earth tremors and quakes on a daily basis. Larger earthquakes only typically happen along or very close to major fault lines (dont think oregon is on one) but dozens of (perhaps not hundreds like this situation) small earthquakes do not indicate that a large earthquake is going to occur soon as kinetic energy is frequently being released.

Excuse me but where do they get off saying that there are no volcano's in the area? Mt. St. Helen and the whole of the cascade range is volcanic.

I was out of town when I read about these quakes. Today while on the plane, I saw Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens -- basically I had a great view of the various volcanoes along the Pacific Northwest going back home to Cali.

The pilot mentioned a little after we passed those Mts, that he wanted to share something when we get further along the flight. I was thinking it would of been cool if he would of mentioned which Mts. were which. But from using Google Earth I somewhat knew them already.

When were over Oregon, I was looking out the window and saw a lake that was like a crater. At about the same time of me looking at it, and figuring that it must of been Crater Lake, the pilot started up on the loud speaker and told those who were on the left side of the plane that if they look out the window they'd see Crater Lake.

He mentioned that Crater Lake was about 2000 ft. deep, and that a volcanic event happened about 7000 years ago which caused it's present form.

When I got home, and after checking out this thread...I looked at more information about Crater Lake.
Crater Lake National Park

Geology
For more details on this topic, see Mount Mazama.
Volcanic activity in the area is fed by subduction off the coast of Oregon as the Juan de Fuca Plate slips below the North American Plate (see plate tectonics). Heat and compression generated by this movement has created a mountain chain topped by a series of volcanoes, which together are called the Cascade Range. The large volcanoes in the range are called the High Cascades. However, there are many other volcanoes in the range as well, most of which are much smaller.

Geometry of a subduction zone:


I was trying to find the USGS add-on for google earth and came across this blog along the way. If you scroll the page a bit, there's also information in regards to how Pacific coast Earthquake faults trigger each other:
Quake swarms off of Oregon coast a mystery

I didn't think to take a picture of the other Mt. ranges but got this view of Mt. Shasta.

But I agree with grover...there should be mention about the Volcanoes on land since the geology section of Crater Lake on Wiki states "Volcanic activity in the area is fed by subduction off the coast of Oregon as the Juan de Fuca Plate slips below the North American Plate (see plate tectonics)."

I found an interesting article rawstory.com

Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area.

Scientists don't know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University

On the hydrophones, the quakes sound like low thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening, Dziak said. Some of the quakes have also been detected by earthquake instruments on land.

Does anyone know if this type of thing happened near the Indian ocean before the big tsunami.

whoreallyknows,

I remember reading about foreshocks in the area of Sumatra but haven't found too much on quake swarms.

If you have Nasa World Wind there's this lab sheet online you can check out. I'd do it but don't have the time right now -- under Foreshocks and Aftershocks.

Here's an article that mentions swarms but it doesn't state if it was before. Scroll down to the section Findi ng Fault

This is an abstract of an article about Microseismic anomalies before the Sumatra earthquake of December 26, 2004

Abstract:
Microseismic records from five broadband IRIS stations located at distances of 1000-2000 km from the earthquake source are studied. Unordinary programs are used to extract hidden periodicities, determine signal coherence at different stations, and reveal asymmetry in wave amplitudes. The records obtained at a few stations 60 h before the Sumatra earthquake include periodic oscillations in the range of periods from 20 to 60 min that arose after the McQuary earthquake and continued for about 24 h. Synchronization of waves recorded at all stations commenced 53 h before the Sumatra earthquake and continued up to the time of the earthquake, with the predominant period gradually increasing from a few minutes to tens of minutes.

Forgot to mention, I was reading up on the The January, 1700 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami. The link isn't the exact one I was reading but close enough.

Between 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM, local time, on January 26th 1700, a great earthquake shook the Pacific Northwest. This quake, with magnitude estimated at 9.0, rocked the region with strong shaking for several long minutes minutes while coastal Washington plummeted as much as 1.5 meters relative to coastal waters.

How is it possible to know that any event on the Cascadia Subduction ever occurred, let alone to place it within one hour of its occurrence 300 years ago? Let the evidence speak for itself and discover an ancient earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.

Tectonics of the Western U.S.

If it weren't for the absolute fantastical ideology behind what i'm about to say, i'd go and hunt down some evidence.

I'm inclined to believe that humankind has put too much material in one place, and those tectonic plates can't handle it anymore.

If you live in that area I would suggest a vacation to a place like Florida. This news cant be good. What if that lava that they are hearing is really on its way to Mt. Ranier or about to make a new one in the area? If Ranier starts to bulge pack up and leave for good.

I just saw that St.Helens just stopped bulging so maybe that lava is finding a new way out or is pushing into the tube that feeds Ranier. Scary thought. I walked on the Kilauea lava flows as lava was running under my feet with the geologist from the park as they took samples and its is something I highly recommend to everyone. Go during the day but stay until dark to see all the lava flows around you. When you drive up to the Volcano you cant see it and then you walk over to a cliff and so OK I'm on it lol as you stare across the caldera that is massive to say the least.

I stood at the edge of this crater and walked on that lava flow in the pic below. A trip of a lifetime unless she blows her stack. You realize the danger when they make you have flashlights and lots of water to go down to the flows.

hvo.wr.usgs.gov...

I also monitor the quakes in the world daily...there are a lot ...and occure moore on unussual places...

could it be related to 2012 ?? (i personally don't believe that there will be 1bang on 2012.. but that the date is a peak in the 28.500 year cycle..wich means that the process is sofar that we can notice the changes in oure inviorment now... every years records are broken..
earth is still a luiqid sfere in the system... and gravityforces are pulling on it..
amerika can splitt up in 2 pieces?

here a nice link.. all what happends in the world in one page..

www.goto2012.nl...



[edit on 13-4-2008 by ressiv]

[edit on 13-4-2008 by ressiv]