What might really be happening in Washington State?

Good afternoon all (or evening, depending on where you are )

It looks like they have started to 'back fill' the quake list for the weekend. Here is what they have so far:

MAP 1.0 2011/03/13 12:37:21 45.702 -122.562 15.1 2 km ( 1 mi) NNE of Five Corners, WA
MAP 1.7 2011/03/13 06:47:12 46.596 -124.388 44.3 28 km ( 18 mi) WNW of Ocean Park, WA
MAP 1.3 2011/03/12 14:39:46 45.341 -121.697 6.4 21 km ( 13 mi) SSW of Parkdale, OR
MAP 1.0 2011/03/12 12:41:36 46.634 -122.392 20.2 12 km ( 7 mi) NW of Morton, WA
MAP 1.3 2011/03/12 09:53:47 45.338 -121.701 6.2 21 km ( 13 mi) SSW of Parkdale, OR

earthquake.usgs.gov...


All very minor and nothing too unusual...except for one. The 1.7 just off-shore of Washington.

Go to THIS website. It is an interactive quake map that I refrence often. I previously expressed concern about a very small, rather deep quake (for our area) on the peninsula. If you select the 'depth plot' bubble, you will see that this most recent 1.7 quake is at the same depth and in line with the other one. My fear are that these are the first real signs of 'traditional' seismic activity coming from the subduction zone.

So far the SPECTOGRAMS today are look just as if not more active than yesterday.

The deep tremors recorded yesterday are still there. So for whatever reason that i am sure we will never know, they chose to remove the ones from the 12th but not the 13th? Because they knew it was noticed, or because there is a legitimate reason? Well, I am sending an email and asking.

Rainier is showing a bit of micro quake activity: RAINIER

I would really like to know what is coming across here: PB943
(note: it has been windy for two days straight- so I do not think that is a gust of wind )

Here is ANOTHER visual of the same station (these are at the south end of the olympic peninsual. just west of seattle)

And how about this?: PB 941 (south of seattle, east of olympia)

Alright...here is another one further up on the peninsula showing the same thing: PB013

This one is up in Vancouver. It is very messy, but you can still clearly see it starts showing the same signal at the same time: PB012

And another at the tip of the olympic peninsula: PB04


There are several more PB stations scattered along the coast, but unfotunately several of them are not working.

This is either one big long serious gust of wind (that is still going), or tremor. My concern for stems from the fact that these stations are near where the suspected subduction zone lies below.

I will ask some with more knowledge to take a look.

reply to post by westcoast

Hi Westcoast,

most of the deep tremors recorded yesterday are still there, but they've deleted some of them. Well, thirty-five of them, to be exact, leaving 239. I have a screenshot of the original display of the data (taken before they "updated" at 13:18:48 PDT) that shows what was originally published.

Crucially, the number of "hours" of tremor has been reduced from 18 to 15.3, and the first three tremors of the day -- 2011-03-13 00:00:00, 2011-03-13 00:05:00, 2011-03-13 00:07:30 -- are now missing. While other tremors are also missing (as noted above), these are key ones because as I said in my earlier post, the first one starting right on midnight anf the others close after it strongly indicated tremor activity continuing from the previous day. Now they are gone and the first tremor shows at 2011-03-13 00:45:00, it's much less likely to arouse suspicion if anyone studies the data in fuutre.

I need to also note that when I first spotted this "update" a few minutes ago, the number of tremors deleted was 20, leaving 254 of the original 274. The number of "hours" of tremor had been reduced from 18 to 16.5. Then even as I set up to do the screenshot, the data displayed changed again to the figures I've now edited into the opening paragraph here. Also, the tremors in northern California were removed, but were then returned.

Here is a screenshot I took some hours ago that shows the original published data:


and here's a screenshot as of a few minutes ago:


I also have a full list of the tremor times on file. I might have to sift through them to see which times were removed.

Mike

Originally posted by westcoast
Thanks for the replies. The fact that no one has jumped up and told me I'm stupid is not making me feel any better though.

I wanted to keep the original post as scientific as possible, so now I would also like to add to my list of reasons, the recent 'noise' phenomenom.

I am a personal 'witness' to the strange sounds we have been experiencing here. There is a long thread on it, I will find it and add it here in a bit. The best way I can describe it is as if the ground is resonating and then this resonation is bounced off the atmosphere and then you hear it as a kind of far away, distant thunder, but closer than it sounds. Wow...does that even make sense to anyone besides myself?

Let me describe it this way: I was outside at night and heard what I thought was a wierd thunder, but I knew it wasn't thunder. It was if I could feel the vibration in my body and then hear it from a distance, low and rumbling. The sky was clear over me and according to the radar, everywhere near me. I immediately went inside and checked to make sure baker wasn't rumbling (that's what it sounded like) and checked the local weather. I found the thread regarding this very noise later and I just don't know what to make of it. I have heard it three times now.

I have always thought it was geological in nature. When I found out about the possible caldera, I immediately thought of this 'noise' and wondered if it could be connected.

Okay...back to the thread.

TA, I eagerly await to hear what your reply is. I am hoping it can be easily explained away as something other than HT. I agree that many, many seismos all along the coast are looking wierd. But again, I do not normally monitor those specific stations, so I can not give an opinion on them.

I am going to do some more research later tonight when I actually have time and do some comparisons. I'll try to debunk some of this myself, and hopefully wont find more info to support it.

Edit to add the thread link: What's shaking the skies of the northwest?

[edit on 15-3-2010 by westcoast]

Ok your stupid. I hope that makes you feel much more comfortable
That being said I have to agree with your reasoning on this issue,but hope you are wrong as I do not live that far away from Washington. .

reply to post by JustMike


Have you considered that these might be from the Japanese large quakes?

Here is B012 at a resolution that you can at least see!
B012.PB

This is the usual 'noise' but I am going to pull one just to make sure.

reply to post by PuterMan

Hi Puterman,

as these are deep tremors rather than the "usual" seismic activity I'm not sure if the Japan quake applies in quite that way, however it may be applicable in other ways. Even so, do you think the Japan quake would give them cause to pull the data for all 124 deep tremors that were published for March 12? Meaning on the basis that they were false readings? Like, all of them?

reply to post by PuterMan


Did you look at PB943? That is one of the ones that I am looking at the most


Also, PB013


(thanks for taking the time to look, BTW)

@JustMike

You beat me to it! I too just took a screen shot and was about to post it. I wonder what the heck is going on with that. Never seen it happen before.

reply to post by westcoast

Exactly. This is not something I can recall seeing prior to March 12. This is data for deep tremors and a whole different kettle of stinking dead Californian sardines from the usual deletes we see on USGS, for example, many of which are perfectly legit when we dig to find out why. I don't like this and I'm feeling nervous as a cat in a room full of Grannies in rocking chairs anyway, so this is not helping.

reply to post by JustMike


Okay, I couldn't stand it anymore. I wrote a letter to the guy who maintains the website. We'll see what the officiall word is. I would imagine that the energy being released might make it a bit difficult to distinguish things maybe...but it just seems like a whole lotta info to pull at once.

Another thing I feel I need to point out, is that those PB stations I listed, that are showing a bunch of 'noise' pretty much sit right above the subduction zone.


ETA: Okay, one more thing to add about my little dog. I mentioned yesterday that she had one of her shaking/scared episodes...that then faded to just being scared. I need to say that she is still scared. Last night it was really starting to bother me. She would stand in the middle of the room, with her head lowered, 'pointing' SW...like she was listening to something in the floor. It was actually starting to freak the whole family out (I share some of my thoughts with them, but it is very watered down. No need to scare my kids)..today, while not acting as scared, she is still not her self. Perhaps she is still hearing something but getting used to it? I don't know. The easist way to describe it though is that she seems scared.....you know, how a dog will cower, or look around anxously...just not herself.

If someone wouldn't mind looking at a specific station for me? It's station WISC at this website. It has been windy off an on today, & the buildings are newer and built to earthquake code so they are meant to move, etc. I felt perfectly okay this morning, and yes I'm jumpy from everything already, but this afternoon...wow.

I'm not feeling as much pressure in my body as I was last night, but I do have a lot of ringing in my ears & the disoriented feeling. It *seems* like the building is getting that subtle bouncy feeling, but this building is built to do that and in a larger downtown area. And unlike at my house, it would be much, much harder for me to differentiate true movement from normal activity.

It would be appreciated, but I know how everyone is already looking at a million things, so understandable if no one is able to get to it.

reply to post by westcoast

I'll be interested to see what the official response is. I'm sure they have something prepared as they have to know they'll get some enquries. I don't even mean that facetiously (though it could be taken that way ). It's pretty sop to have something ready to hand when they get queries like this.

I just hope it's not a snow job (if that's an idiom that fits)...

About your dog.. Some dogs can "point" with remarkable accuracy. Are you able to take a fairly accurate bearing, so to speak (even check it with a compass if possible) and try to figure out where she's pointing?

reply to post by onthelookout

Hi there,

I'm just checking WISC now via this site on PNSN. (This is easier than digging back through the quake list page. ) I see that earlier today it had some kind of interference problems... Just a second... Looking back more...

Yeah. It's had intereference problems for at least the last three days. That makes whatever it's showing now less reliable, though I can say that it had something rather long and solid in duration for around half an hour from about 14:30 UTC. But that ended over 7 hours ago now.

What I'll do is check a few other webis round there that might show things a bit clearer and also get onto GEE and check with that too. Give me about 15 minutes or so and I'll be back.

reply to post by JustMike


Thank you! Please, take your time. I appreciate immensely the care & time others give here to help the rest of us. I'm a very patient person

This is my first day back in the office since the Japan quake, so it could very well be the psychological factor of being in a highrise building mixed with a lack of sleep, worry, & a very vivid imagination.

reply to post by onthelookout

No problem. If you don't mind saying, are you actually in Bellevue at the moment? Or are you more in the direction towards Redmond or Kirkland? I'm trying to work out what might be affecting you most and it would help to be able to figure it out better. (Please don't mention the specific building you are in, though.)

Thanks,

Mike

reply to post by westcoast


Sorry I am really busy at the mo and I have not had time to do this.

What I will say is that it is nothing. We saw this pattern at Yellowstone so many times in the winter. I could probably even dig up seismograms of it.

In fact I have a GIF in my media. This is SMNR.UW..EHZ in 2010 on ordinal days 69 through to 73 (10th March? thereabouts.) You can see the same pattern. This is something that happens in the winter in these cold areas.



And another: 15:00 to 17:00 on B207 16/03


And one for Cahto Peak, Cali on 29th April 2010


I have several more on my computer but they are not uploaded. Those were.

Found a perfect one. YMS in October 2003 - and we are still here!!

reply to post by JustMike


Yes, I'm in Bellevue currently. I keep missing the time when I feel something, but I did catch it once at 3:31pm. Just in case that helps at all. I can't seem to figure out how to find the exact time on these things & have given up.

reply to post by PuterMan


Is there a specific reason why they do that in the winter time? Because there's no snow here currently (non-mountainous areas that is). I just wanted to make sure I understood correctly.

reply to post by onthelookout


Yes, basically all of these are telemetry problems and mostly caused by icing on the microwave equipment. That is what it usually is in Yellowstone.

It can also be interference but you would need to know what was going on in the area to determine what caused that. One thing it is not is HAARP and another thing it is not is Scalar Waves.

reply to post by onthelookout

Okay, thank you for the info. I can understand why you wanted us to check WISC specifically, then.

First, as the webis are nearly always shown in UTC, you need to know the difference betwen UTC and your local time. Because daylight saving started for you yesterday, you are now UTC minus 7 hours. This means that when it's noon UTC on a given day, it's only 5 a.m. for you.

So, if we take the typical working day where you are as being around 8 am to 5 pm (08:00 to 17:00 hours), that's 3 p.m. (15:00 hours) to midnight (00:00) UTC.

Now taking a look at WISC for the second half of today, you can see it started getting rather busy at around 14:12 UTC (about 7:12 am for you) and that went on for around half an hour. Since then it's showing some activity but not so much as earlier (meaning at about 14:12).

However, if we check the webicorder called MARY (because it's over by Marymoor Park), you can see that it started getting some strong signals at around 15:00 UTC (8 am local time) and they have continued on, with a couple of good bumps there. The latest one was at about 21:50 UTC -- meaning about ten minutes before 3 pm your time. I couldn't find much of this jolt on other webis so it was pretty local, but all the same it might have affected you, even if it doesn't show up much on WISC. But then, WISC is a bit suspect anyway because it's had obvious technical issues for at least a few days. By the way, don't worry about those very thin "spikes" you see on MARY. They're called calibration spikes and they're not quakes or anything. Also don't be concerned that the trace is running off the level a bit. This doesn't mean the ground is tilting , it's just that the thing needs a bit of adjusting to make it draw straight.

I've also been watching some stations on GEE. They're not really close to you: one's up on Lummi Island, another is over in Stanwood, and one is over in Eldon. But they all show the same basic trace, which is a very mild "wavy" pattern. The period between the peak of one "wave" and the next is around a minute to a minute & 20 seconds or so, and on the "Z" (up and down movement) scale, the speed of movement is very, very small: about 5 microns per second. Just for comparison, a human hair has a thickness of between 50 and 120 microns. This gives you some idea of how incredibly sensitive these things are when they record ground movement.

So, in the general area, there is not a lot going on. There has been some movement up by Marymoor Park, but it's clearly local as it's not being picked up very far away from that seismo. As for where you are, while there a little bit showing on the seismo, there's certainly nothing worrying there.

If there was or I wasn't sure you can believe that I'd be getting in contact with several other people to check things out! But for now, at least, it's looking okay.

And on that more positive note, I'll say goodnight because it's way past midnight here. (I'm at UTC plus 1, which is 8 hours ahead of you!) If you'd like to know anything else then just send me a U2U. If I don't know the answer (which is very possible! ) then I'll do what I can to get the information that you need.

Best regards,

Mike

Okay, I have to make this quick because I have to go run errands, but I got a repsonse back to my email.

I don't want to paste the whole email, only because I did not imply I would be sharing it...but the gist of it is that he seems very sincere and I do not think he was trying to mislead me at all. In fact, I was surprised at his candor. Because of the quake and the numerous after-shocks, it is affecting the equipment and he is unsure of the validity of the automatic recordings. Rather than have false, possibly alarming information out to public (which is exactly what happened with me ) he pulled it and is still going through it all manually.

Here is part of what he said:

The shear number of aftershocks in Japan within the first couple of days of the mainshock is completely
overwhelming our detection. Waves from the aftershocks travel through the earth and come up from
basically straight beneath the stations. This makes it look like some signal coming from the middle of each subnetwork, and my algorithm is having problems distinguishing tremor from repeating aftershock signals. Normally distant earthquake recordings are spread out and don't dominate, but this is a special case. This kind of event doesn't happen very often, so it is difficult to prepare for such anomalous cases.

He went on to say that his primary goal is to have accurate information without false reporting and he is still reviewing it. He also seemed to appreciate the fact that there are people who use and appreciate the website.

So there you have it. I wrote him back again with a couple of more questions so I will let you know if i learn anything more that is pertinent. He did stress that he is still unsure of what is and is not real tremor on the 12th...so we wait and see how that day works itself out.


@Puterman...thank you. As always. I am still curious about it...it was in the 50's today, so no chance of icing. I pointed them out to the gentleman at the university just for fun. I would guess at local noise, but that it shows up on stations that are over 50 miles away from each other. Oh well...we'll see.


Oh you guys, you HAVE to check out this article:
ARTICLE


Talks about all the affects....like the North American Plate moving 66 feet and St.Louis moving up and down an inch!!! Amazing stuff...back later to answer some other questions!

(justmike - sent ya an email)

Oh wow, fantastic information JustMike. Marymoor has a highway going along the side of it & has tons of sports fields, race track (running/biking), etc. so I can only imagine that a lot of stuff would show up on there.

I think I must chalk it up to vivid imagination since I felt fine earlier in the day & less so later (which sounds like the opposite of what the activity was showing). Or maybe I just noticed the sudden lack of activity, having become use to activity....okay...I think I need to give my analytical brain a break and just stop thinking about the who/what/where/whys for a bit. Good grief.

Thanks a TON for your time & effort. I do feel that I can relax a bit (for now). And I hope you sleep well!