An Experiment in Alternative Methods of Earthquake Prediction

reply to post by TMG333


You were probably sensing the 7.1 in Vanuatu building up too!
That's why your symptoms didn't all go away after the local one.
I have wondered what happens to someone who is sensitive if they live near the epicenter of a 9.0!

I have a nephew who had a heart attack at the exact time of Chile's big one!
36 years old at the time, six foot four, slim, had just won $100 from the hospital where he works, for completing their 'Healthy Living Program'! Made me wonder!

I wonder if there have ever been any studies done after large eq's of increases in ER admissions?
Probably would be hard to do one with the HIPPA laws now!

Well, I hope I'll never find out what happens to a sensitive person in a 9.0! Hah.

I am feeling better today though, somewhat. It always seems to be something when I'm home. I have noticed when I'm back on the east coast on vacation that I feel 10x better, and when I'm in California, it's always headaches, joint pain, nausea, dizziness... never feeling 100%. My mother has always said she has inner ear problems and her balance is off due to living in California most of her life, from all the little earthquakes around us daily. She's sensitive to environmental changes so I don't doubt that I am too, since I've adopted her high tolerance to pain medication and sleep disorders. I'm making plans to move out of here and hopefully live a more comfortable life back east with my fiance near his family. In the meanwhile, I'll try eating some more corn! Thanks for the feedback.

And strangely the quake I posted about feeling yesterday has now been deleted from USGS. Way to make me feel like a crazy person! What does that usually mean? Something else caused it? I do live close to a military base.

Ok so a couple of days ago we had an earthquake. We couldnt physically feel it but we "felt" it. The next day it was on the news. My mom always told me she gets dizzy before an earthquake and almost every time there was an earthquake. This dosent happen to me, ever. So I told my mom. She looked surprised. She said she got dizzy and there was an earthquake. Then she started telling me how I'm sensitive and our family has a history of unusual happenings. She said to use it so I don't loose it. She also told Mr how she "clenses" her body at night the same as she has her whole like.
The weird thing is we never talk about these things. When I bring up this subject she usually gets mad.
Our bodies are capable of much more than we were taught.
Then 2 days later I was sitting on the floor while my girlfriend slept on the couch above me, just sitting watching tv when I got a feeling I never felt before. It was scary and I really thought the world was ending. I really can't explain the feeling besides I was totally scared . Turned out everything was fine. Maybe it was my mind warning me of a disaster. All i know is around feburary 1st is when I started to feel this building up sensation.
It's still here just not as heavy as a couple days ago.
I'm waiting to see what happens on the 11th. Something bad always happens on the 11th
And here in Oregon we are way past due for an earthquake, unfortunatly...

Time to update a little and provide some of the details and seismo screenshots from Memphis and Bauxite (near Little Rock) that I promised to do a couple of days ago. I'm doing two posts for this, the first to explain a few things and the second to give more detail about the Memphis situation.

For those who have been following the thread, you know what I'm talking about. For anyone who's just dropped by, though, it's best if I give you a couple of reference points. Back in this post on page 129 at 1:13 pm UTC I logged a prediction for a possible quake event in the Memphis (TN) region, which I expected within about five days from date of posting, and with a magnitude of around 5 or greater.

In some following posts there was discussion about this, and in this post I added a screen shot of seismo traces I had been monitoring.

The seismographs are identified as TA.W44A and TA.X41A. (TA stands for “Transportable Array”; they are devices that can be moved and repositioned.) The first is located in open parkland in Memphis (well east of the main city area), the second is in very quiet surroundings a few miles south of Bauxite, AR. (It was the closest one to Little Rock that I could find and monitor in near-real-time.) For simplicity, I'll refer to them as the Memphis and Bauxite seismos.

Okay, back to that prediction: after the time window had passed and no such quake event had occurred I posted here to declare a “no hit” for the above prediction.

Now to the interesting stuff. It wasn't a complete waste of cyber-ink to post that prediction, because during the “time window” (ie after I'd posted) there was for a while a significant uptick in what I'll describe as “background” seismic activity, especially on the Memphis seismo.

First, here is a screen shot of the seismos on Saturday Jan 21 2012 at around 14:37 UTC, ie about an hour after my prediction post.
(Note: Memphis and Little Rock are both UTC minus 6 hours. So, 14:37 UTC is 8:37 am in TN and AR.)

Just for the purposes of comparison, the main traces to focus on are the “BHZ” ones. These are the “Z” (vertical components) of ground movement. I've found that the BHE (east-west) and BHN (north-south) components can be a bit distracting so most of the time I don't even run their traces unless something major happens. (In most of the screenshots I'll post, I only ran the Z traces.)

To help members who might wonder what they're looking at, I've taken the above screenshot and added some detail to it:

– The crude black boxes I've drawn in show the seismo ID numbers.
– The icky green box next to each one shows what component is displayed and here, I've marked the “BHZ” (vertical movement) traces.
– On the left of the top trace I've added “SCALE”. It shows us the actual amount of ground acceleration per second. (That's how movement is measured – by acceleration.) Here it's in microns/sec, and so the movement is very, very small: to compare, the average human hair is about 50 microns in diameter!
– I've also added in pairs of horizontal red lines. These give a rough idea of the “average” amount of movement in the trace. Please note that top trace has an average range of 3 microns/sec (movement up and down), the lower only 1.2 to maybe 1.5.

It's always important to not just compare the traces visually, but to look at the current scale. The lower scale, while still in microns/sec, is more finely graduated as at that time, there was less movement. So, it could show it in finer detail.

As the traces are not aligned to zero on the scale, we need to read them accordingly. Sometimes the things just don't line up very well. It's not really an issue, though. We can still work out the amount of movement.

Anyway, the main thing is that at this time, just an hour or so after my “prediction” post, while there was background movement in Memphis and Bauxite, it was nothing too dramatic.

(Continued in next post.)

(Continued from above.)
Now let's take a look at the following day. Sunday Jan 22, 2012, at ~ 1500 UTC (9 am local):

Memphis has a movement range of about 2.5, Bauxite now is down slightly to around 1.0. So, very little change from about 24 hours earlier.

So, on to Monday Jan 23, this time at ~ 14:00 (8 am local):

Now, about 23 hours after the previous trace shown above, Memphis has a range of around 4 and is quite heavy. Bauxite's range is also up a little, to about 1.5. But also notice that Bauxite's trace is heavier: this means that there was more change in the rate of movement.

A couple hours or so later at ~ 16:20 (10:20 am local), Memphis was busier still, and so was Bauxite:

Remember, although the Bauxite (lower) trace looks bigger, it actually shows less movement that the top one for Memphis, because its scale is finer. Now, the average range for Memphis is around 5.5 to 6, while Bauxite's is around 1.8 or so. (Memphis shows a spike around 16:27, with a range of 26, and this makes the average range of 6 look much smaller. That spike may have been a micro-quake, so small that it was likely unfelt by anyone.)

Key point: the movement in Memphis is a bit more than three times greater than in Bauxite, and also 3 times more than it was (in Memphis) a day or two prior.

This situation in Memphis continued on intermittently into the next day. Here's the shot for Tuesday Jan 24 at ~ 14:30 (8:30 am local):

Memphis: average range 6. Bauxite: still around 1.8 to 2 and quite busy.

Then it began to quieten down. Here's Wednesday Jan 25 at ~ 15:00 (9 am local):

Memphis: around 3.5 to 4 range. Bauxite: about 1.5 to 1.8, but a little less heavy looking.
I like to comment here that if the increase for Memphis was due to cultural activity like road traffic, then I'd expect the traces to be virtually the same on a Monday and Wednesday morning at what is basically peak hour. However, the variation in the traces would suggest that it's not due to traffic.

What's been happening since? Well, things seemed to settle down for a while but not quite back to where it was prior to Jan 22 or so. Right now, Memphis is showing a range of about 4, Bauxite about 1.5 to 1.8. So, I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Just to finish off, I'd like to add a screenshot that shows the sort of detail you can view with GEE if you wish to. Here's Memphis and Bauxite, today (Monday) Feb 6 2012 from ~ 17:15 to 17:35 UTC:

You can see the ranges I was talking about.

Now, here's a small section of the above. I've zoomed in on the trace, so it's only showing us about 9 seconds, from ~ 17:25:45 to 17:25:53.

(There's some color loss because this is a jpeg image file. In reality it's much sharper and the lines are clearly blue.)
Notice that the two traces are quite different in character. While the lower one (Bauxite) usually looks like this and presents the impression of a gentle wave, the trace for Memphis is much more irregular. Again, that's the way it usually is. These two regions produce traces that are, in fact, quite different animals and this could in part be due to the substrata through which the seismic waves propogate.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Everyone, please keep us posted if you sense or notice anything of interest.

Mike

reply to post by TMG333

Hi TMG,

it's possible that USGS deleted the quake because there wasn't actually a quake in that location. Please don't take offense, as I'm not saying this to be facetious. It does happen sometimes. The instruments detect some form of ground motion (or “seismic wave”) and then auto-plot the position and assign a magnitude. However, in some cases what registers on the seismos is not a quake at all and is due to some other cause. In some places mine blasts are a common issue, in others it can be due to other forms of “cultural noise” – for example, heavy machinery nearby can cause problems. Even a falling tree can mess up a seismo's trace. So can wind, especially if there are trees nearby and their roots move slightly with the wind! That's why siting the seismo away from trees is not a bad idea.

There are also cases where a distant quake falsely creates readings that suggest a quake somewhere else. (Due to teleseismics.) Most of the time, this shouldn't happen but sometimes it does. Then, there are sometimes glitches with the hardware and/or signal problems.

The situation that is most bothersome is when USGS deletes quakes that were obviously real quakes and were in some cases even reported in local media as having occurred and been felt by inhabitants! We have some examples of this in the thread. Why they do this is open to conjecture but we have fair evidence that sometimes they do.

reply to post by otie1

Hi Otie and thanks for posting. I saw your posts over in TrueAmerican's recent thread about the Cascadia issue.

I understand exactly what you are saying about the feelings you had. If you go back in this thread to posts from the beginning of March 2011 onwards you'll see that several members had similar, growing feelings of dread back then, and the apparent cause became clear when the big Japan quake hit on March 11. This post by lasertaglover on March 9 is especially interesting. See also Westcoast's post that refers to a post she made on March 10.

So, rest assured that you are not alone: there are plenty of people who for whatever reason are “quake sensitive”. I think one day this phenomenon will be shown to have a valid, scientific basis, but in the meantime all we can do is keep plugging away, share our experiences and note anything that we feel could indicate an upcoming seismic or volcanic event.

By the way, eating corn (or oatmeal) seems to help alleviate the symptoms. It's apparently due to the melanin these foods contain. In fact, any food with a high amount of melanin is good. (I go for the corn usually.)

Best regards,

Mike

Couple of ear rings today..bad dreams last night..looked like the west coast getting hit by something..couldn't make it out in the dream.

Weird animals everywhere, but MI has had weird weather this year.

Anxiety is building too. Something is coming.

Staying calm here...breathe.

I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but here is an article from Dec. 2011. It talks about animal behaviour and earthquakes. Pretty interesting. Gives some examples about toads and snakes. www.bbc.co.uk...

reply to post by JustMike


Thank you Mike, I wish I could give you ten stars for all of your hard work you put into explaining what has been happening in Memphis and Arkansas recently. I know myself and everyone who contributes to this thread appreciates your imput. You gave a lot of detailed information and graphs to back up what you were thinking, that took a lot of personal time on your part. Maybe I can give you ten of these.....

I am extremely busy with school right now but I am watching what is going on around Memphis and keeping tabs on this thread. So I may not be posting much but I am still keeping an eye on things and will chime in when it looks like something is up. Anyway, great job!

reply to post by phoenixlights321

Thanks for linking to that article. No, that particular one is pretty new and hasn't been posted in this thread before, as far as I recall. Very interesting, especially as it mentions possible causes of headaches in humans due to positive ions. Definitely something I'd recommend that members read so we can discuss it in more detail.

reply to post by justsaying
Many thanks! Such posts are tedious but I feel it's worth the time as it documents what's been going on and that could be of value in the future. Very grateful for your support, and also for everyone who contributes to this ongoing project. (Folks, please note that I didn't start this thread! I have simply taken on some kind of role with it as the OP hasn't been online for quite a while.)

Mike

Meanwhile, as the west coast of the US is an area well worthy of our concern from a quake perspective, I often check some seismos there to see how things look. Just now I was monitoring two regions: the northern, around Seattle, and the southern, around L.A. Up north the seismos show pretty much as usual, but I've noted that the CI.USC seismo (Univ of Southern Cal in LA) is showing some quite busy traces right now. As it's still pretty early there (LA is UTC minus 8 hours, so it's just after 7 am) I doubt that traffic in the region would account for what I'm seeing. Here's a screen shot I took a few minutes ago, showing activity to around 6:54 am Pacific time:


The upper trace -- CI.SBC -- is in Santa Barbara and it's not much different from what it often shows. Perhaps a bit above the usual background rate but not markedly. But CI.USC is showing a range of movement of about 15 to 18 microns/sec (vertical scale) and looks very "busy".

I'll be keeping an eye on this. If anyone is (or even knows) a member in the region there, please let us know if things seem pretty normal for you.

EDIT to add: I have to point out that what we see on the USC seismo does not have to indicate anything of great concern. It's simply something I've noted for members' benefit in case any wish to follow up on it.

Secondly, I'd like to give the seismo locations, so that interested members can fire up Google Earth or whatever and see where they are:

The USC seismo is located at: 34.0192 -118.2860
The SBC seismo is located at: 34.4408 -119.7149
(Make sure you include the minus symbol before the second number as that indicates west longitude. Otherwise, you'll wind up in Eastern China. )

For details of seismos and their precise locations, members can refer to this list which is hosted by USGS. This is a very long list, so give it time to load then scroll down to the seismo station's name. (Ignore the "CI" part. You only need the actual seismo's ID, not the network it's in. So, to find CI.USC, for example, just scroll down to USC.)

Mike

I have to put this out there....something is building.

Normally I say seems like, or maybe leading up to something.

No, I'm getting everything, in the same order, as last year, about a week before the Japan quake.

Ear ringing increasing in frequency, emotions, dreams, kids, pets, and life exceeding expectations.

I pray I'm wrong or nuts...but this is identical as before. Sorry...

Peace and Love

reply to post by JustMike


And just for the record, you rock.

Ty for everything you do.

Peace

reply to post by JustMike


Wow, awesome post! I don't know how you can stay focused & get so much done! Especially with all the bigger earthquake activity lately! I'm a complete mess! Can't even hold a thought for more than a few seconds. Most of the time reading is even next to impossible!

But I was playing devil's advocate whenl I read your post on Memphis.
I thought, aha! The 23rd was a holiday! If it was traffic, the pattern would have been different! But when I went to check, it was Monday, the 16th, that was the holiday!!! I didn't want it to be true.
Back to being a little leery now! So glad you're keeping an eye on it!

Realizing how little I know & how much there is to learn!
If I was on the upside of the hill of life....instead of the downside.....and know what I know now.....I think I would have probably gone into geology. At least something to do with earthquakes!

They said on the Weather Channel, that today is the 200th anniversary of the biggest quake in the US, the New Madrid Quake. I wondered why they picked today for a shakeout! They said it rang church bells in South Carolina. Didn't the first one ring bells in Boston? What he was talking about sounded more like happenings from the first. He gave a magnitude....7 something though. Just didn't all add up from what I've read, if I'm remembering right! And that isn't always the case!

Stay well!
WOQ

reply to post by phoenixlights321

Good article! Especially the part about positive airborne ions! Hmmm...... Makes a lot of sense. I wonder how far they can travel & how far away they still have an effect?!

I have one of those negative ionizing salt lamps packed away somewhere. I'll have to dig it out & plug it in. See if it helps relieve some of these symptoms. It's worth a try. I'm always up for an experiment!

Thanks for posting that!

reply to post by lasertaglover


I'm afraid you might be right. It's been a roller coaster ride for days now!
There will be a 6 or higher & I think; that's it, it's over! It does get a little better, but then starts to build up again!

The poor cats must be feeling it too....they are sleeping so much.
The one who notices it most, the female, around the times of the bigger ones......'trills'...... Just like one of the tribbles in that Star Trek episode!!!
I'm going to have to make a note of the times & see how close she is!

My hubby is as grouchy as a bear that was woken up early from his hibernation!
He keeps saying it isn't over yet too. But he's still too grouchy to elaborate!!!
Between him & my physical symptoms, I'm going to need a vacation by the time this is over!!!
Too bad I won't be going anywhere. Who knows where it would be safe!
Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide!

WOQ slowly shuffles away, cackling hysterically!!!

reply to post by lasertaglover

Last time you got this specific, the big Japan quake happened less than two days later. So, I hope you won't maintain your strike rate, because the alternative of you being right is pretty awful.

Having said that, I'd rather you speak than stay silent. The same goes for anyone who wishes to post here. We're a friendly bunch; we understand what it's like. You'll get a fair hearing in this thread.

For my own part, I was up really late last night and feeling more nervous than I had any right to be. True, there was a good moon but I've put up with the moon's effects all my life and adapted to them. This was similar to before Japan but to be honest, the dread feelings weren't the same. Just nervy.

As for today, I've been busying myself with watching the seismos for SoCal and I think that what's going on with the USC could be partly due to “cultural noise” – in this case, most likely traffic. During the (California) night, things quietened down a fair bit on that seismo to around half of what it shows on the example I posted yesterday, but in the past two hours it's started to pick up again and now (coming up to 7:30 am LA time) it's getting back to that level of yesterday.

So, if it's traffic it's a huge relief. If it's not then I'm flummoxed – but there'd be nothing new in that!

reply to post by wasobservingquietly and also this one and while we're on a roll, this one as well

Figured it was easier to put all these into one post rather than adding three.

First off, thank you for your comments! To be honest, I had to put off writing those posts for a couple of days as I couldn't concentrate enough to do all the uploading and copying and pasting of linkies and so on. Sometimes my brain just won't do what I want!

Now, about the 200th anniversary of the New Madrid quake and it being the biggest in US history. Well, there's a bit of journalistic license there. While the quake on Feb 7, 1812 was possibly the biggest of the four big ones (and the last), it's not a definite. The others were on Dec 16, 1811 at 2:15 am, the next one the same day just 6 hours later at 8:15 am, and the third on Jan 23, 1812 at 9 am, but from what I've read it's generally accepted that the first and last ones were likely the worst.

But on the other hand, it was the last one (on Feb 7) that had its epicenter near New Madrid (which was destroyed), so it was this quake that gave the name to them all and also (later) to the seismic zone.

Of course, if they say it was "the biggest quake in the US” they might upset a few people in Alaska, whose own massive quake back in 1964 was a full magnitude bigger – at least. I guess they should add (sotto voce) "in the lower 48"...

As to numbers – were the four New Madrid quakes mag 7-something or mag 8-plus – we can't be sure and perhaps we'll never be. Again, most research suggests they were at least in the upper mag 7 range and possibly two were over mag 8, but some dispute that and say they were maybe maximum 7.5. At the end of the day, it comes down to this: we know from the eye-witness accounts and geological evidence that these were powerful and destructive quakes. We also know (from paleoseismologists) that they were not freak, one-off events and that some time in the future, there will likely be another quake in that region just as powerful and there could be several (as happened in 1811/12).

We also know that in the central to eastern US, quakes propagate their energy over a larger area than they do out west. Simply put, a quake of a certain magnitude is felt over a bigger area. And yes: the quake of February 7, 1812, did ring church bells many, many hundreds of miles away, so when we pause to consider that and try to imagine what the shaking must have been like closer to where it happened – well, it's beyond my ability to take it in, to be honest.

Okay, on to the next post. Those positive airborne ions: I doubt that they'd travel very far in great concentration, but the thing that worries me is they could be released even from faults when very little seems to be happening. I know that we have had members in places like eg Guy, Arkansas, who complained of headaches of no known cause and their region was “only” having lots of very small quakes.

Question for all and sundry: when they drill down into the ground in these seismic areas (like Arkansas, for example), does the fracking process allow positive ions to be released? And if so, are we being told about it, or the effects these ions can have on people and animals?

Just a question, but not one I've seen asked before anywhere.

Your next post: Hmmm... Thinking about the above, a negative ion generator might help the cats, too. (And hubby!) Certainly can't do any harm. And some corn or oatmeal wouldn't hurt either. (For hubby, not the cats. )

A magnitude six or bigger? Could well be. But as there is a mag six or bigger once every three days (on average) somewhere in the world, have you been able to figure yet what regions affect you or hubby most? That would help. Not everyone seems to affected equally and being able to tie down what regions seem to influence you (both) the most would be a great step forward. Very close events always seem to come in stronger, but seeing as we have people who posted here just before the big Japan event and they live an ocean away from there, we have to wonder what other factors affect us.

Okay I'll leave it there for now.

Best regards,

Mike

Hi everyone. I have noticed today that the animals outside are pretty much going crazy, the dogs have been barking a lot and my outdoor cats that love it out there have been begging to come in all day. Don't know whether it's because of the dogs which it could be but they are so used to them, or something else is up. My ears have been ringing all day off and on, really tired today and woke up with anxiety. Not to mention waking up craving popcorn, highly unusual!! Could just be the winter blues with the cloudy cool weather, I must admit as well. Anyway, would like to know if anyone else is getting anything?