Seismic fault beneath US is ‘fully loaded’ after 311 years

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Thank you, TrueAmerican for posting this information.

I wouldn't ever call you a fearmongerer and I'll go ahead and apologize for the ones who are.

People who are relying just on Mother Nature's abilities are being quite narrow minded. Just because Mother Nature might wait until 550 years have passed to let this fault bust doesn't mean that the fault couldn't be triggered earlier by artificial methods.



Keep up the great work trying to inform people as well as attempting to wake up those who are more comfortable snoozing.

“It could produce another one tomorrow, or maybe a century or more away,” Steele said. “Certainly geologically, in the not too distant future we’re going to have another one.”

Devils advocate here.

I have a whole bunch of popcorn in my pantry and I would really love to have a reason
to pop it some time.

Bring it on Nature.... I dare you....

I have butter flavor, AND kettle corn flavor!!!!!

I have got enough popcorn for a 10 magnitude.

The only problem is I am right in the N.W seduction zone.... , so we shall see.

If I have to use a microwave, or an open fire in a dystopia of a soon future.

Originally posted by TrueAmerican
No one knows for sure, and some claim it is as high as 30% chance in the next 50. Take away typical scientist stuffy conservatism, and we can call that 50%.

If you had stopped at "No one knows for sure", I'd have to agree with you.

But when you use an article claiming the chance is 10-14% as a source for your latest revision, then you say you think that's really 50%, (and you might be right about it being 50%), you can see how inflating the chances stated in your source by 350-500% can earn you a reputation as a fear monger, right?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I thought I addressed that issue on the first page... This isn't about me and fearmongering, this is about a deadly quake that chances are is going to happen in the next 39 years. It's like there's 100% chance a chunk of space rock will hit the earth again. We just don't know when. And that's what I don't like about using statistics to guess what nature is going to do. No one ever seems to get it right, and animals seem to have a better sense. Some places are just a bad spot to live with threats on that scale. You figure Sumatra ought to be an uninhabited island by now, but no...

I always check this every day earthquake.usgs.gov...

and what concerns me is the lack of activity from Alaska down to Washington which could only mean something is building.

My mom lives in a high rise in Vancouver....been telling her to get out for years.

Thank you for the interesting thread, live in the Pacicfic NW but not near the coast. Your threads are always informative and interesting, and I do not think that providing information about an event that is bound to happen, just a matter of when, is fearmongering.

Maybe this thread will cause someone to make an emergency plan, or to buy a few extra things, which they hopefully will never need, but you never know what can and will happen. ATS is about sharing information and this is where I first learned that Oregon could have a very large earthquake. I never knew about the CSZ, even when I moved up here, as I always thought all the earthquakes were in California.

Question-Which side of the plate (east or west) would be more dangerous for an earthquake? There are always quakes on the west side of the plate, but almost never on the east, or only very small ones, that is why I asked. This thread makes me glad that I live inland.

In my question above, I meant to say large earthquake, but not able to edit now.

Although, I guess it would depend on what one defines as large, but I meant large enough to be felt and cause damage. Or just kind of big?

The southern end of the zone just had a little shake.

MAP 4.1 2011/12/08 05:19:09 40.466 -125.727 2.6 123 km ( 77 mi) W of Petrolia, CA

Mag 4.1 USGS

This is the largest EQ in the vicinity (within 150km of this quakes epicenter) since 14 August 2011....
source

Look at this people....

the obvious fact that nothing is happening from Alaska to Washington is really disconcerting.

Look at the rest of the ring...quakes are happening like friggen popcorn out there....but as per usual not the Canadian west coast.

earthquake.usgs.gov...

nvm

oh hey...something happened

minor hiccup earthquake.usgs.gov...

Quite a concentrated bit of slab slippage/tremor going on the past 2 days in the southern end of the CSZ.
Click to Enlarge
Source page for ETS map

But only one small quake in the vicinity during the past few days... Mag 2.8 offshore

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Great Work there
*&F

There have been a few earthquakes along the CSZ during the past few weeks.
This Mag 4.7 USGS at the far northern end of the zone. A tiny Mag 2.7 USGS the same day, offshore Forks, WA. On 5 Jan 2012, a Mag 3.2 USGS off the coast of Eureka, CA, and 7 small quakes near Petrolia, CA. And let's not forget the 3 shakers offshore of Oregon and southern Washington--USGS Map

Nothing really big, but a lot of "rumbling". I did a search of Mag 3.5 and higher earthquakes during the past year, in the area. 64 total.

Not very many for such a huge geographical area, IMHO. There was one Mag 6.4 on 9 Sept 2011, three in the magnitude 5+ range (Mag 5.4 on 8 Feb 2011, Mag 5.0 on 8 March 2011, and Mag 5.6 on 13 Oct 2011), and 43 magnitude 4.0 to 4.9.
I also looked at the tremor maps. Here is a look at the episodic tremor and slip over the past year. The brightest areas indicate the most slip. And a pic of the surmized locked portion of the CSZ, for reference.

Here is the past month of slip; blue is oldest, red is most recent.

All of these relatively small earthquakes, along with the swarm at Mt. Rainier, are making me take notice. This is the list of Mag 7.0 and higher earthquakes in the same area, since 1976. Nothing since 2005...

PDE 1980 11 08 102734 41.12 -124.25 19 7.2 Mw01023 7C. .......
PDE 1991 08 17 221714.68 41.82 -125.40 13 7.0 MwHRV 5FM .......
PDE 1992 04 25 180604.21 40.37 -124.32 15 7.2 MwHRV 8CM .T....S
PDE 1994 09 01 151553.08 40.40 -125.68 10 7.0 MwGS 6DM .T.....
PDE 2005 06 15 025054.19 41.29 -125.95 16 7.2 MwHRV 4FM .T.....

Source of external data

I'm certainly not trying to fearmonger, just sharing what I see.

Just wanted to add a quote by one of the seismoligists at UW, listed under his current research, to show why some people think the tremor and slip might be important:

One paper of mine is coming out momentarily in G-cubed, showing that tremor can trigger earthquakes, at least starting to address the important question of whether the 500-year M9 in Cascadia is likely to be set off during a tremor episode.

Source of quoted text

reply to post by Olivine


Hey, you can fearmonger anytime you want. Doesn't bother me one bit. Not when it comes to saving lives.

Very nice post. You are quickly becoming one of my favorite posters here, and I very much appreciate your contributions and comments in my threads and around the board as I do from wc, PM, muzzy and crew.

All of these relatively small earthquakes, along with the swarm at Mt. Rainier, are making me take notice. This is the list of Mag 7.0 and higher earthquakes in the same area, since 1976. Nothing since 2005...

So did you decide to agree with the glacier-caused seismicity for Rainier? I am still working on it, and waiting on a response from PNSN. I don't expect one real soon, probably going to be a few days at least, maybe never.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Nope. I don't buy it.
I think all those 2 second duration, vertical "snaps" are probably from the ice. But the "repeating quakes", in my very humble opinion are from steam, volcanic gases, magma or some combination of the three.

ETA: Thank you for your kind words, TA. I'm trying to get up to speed, so that I may contribute to the discussion.

Here is another bit of scary news.

San Andreas Fault connection Studies of past earthquake traces on both the northern San Andreas Fault and the southern Cascadia subduction zone indicate a correlation in time which may be evidence that quakes on the Cascadia subduction zone may have triggered most of the major quakes on the northern San Andreas during at least the past 3,000 years or so. The evidence also shows the rupture direction going from north to south in each of these time-correlated events. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake seems to have been a major exception to this correlation, however, as it was not preceded by a major Cascadia quake.[12]

en.wikipedia.org...



I also think that the Japan quake has pushed the time frame for this occurring up somewhat.