Earthquake in the Carolinas just now?

Just had another earthquake, 3:24 pm today lasted about 40 seconds and about half of what the one on Friday night was.

reply to post by NightFlight


That's a good sized aftershock. Maybe Mag 3.0, 3.2, IDK, I'm not great a guessing the magnitude without watching the station on a regular basis. Here is how it looks in GEE on station TA.Y55A.BHZ:


Here is a link to the station in Pauline, SC.

USGS are taking their sweet time listing the details....

reply to post by Olivine


Can you tell what the intensity was? What it would have registered on the Richter scale? Thanks.

NM, I see you edited it in. Thanks.

USGS just posted it as a 3.2 in the same area as the one on Friday.

An aftershock 2 days later? Really...?

USGS New EQ 3.2 same area...

earthquake.usgs.gov...

Event Time

2014-02-16 20:23:35 UTC
2014-02-16 15:23:35 UTC-05:00 at epicenter
2014-02-16 15:23:35 UTC-05:00 system time

Location

33.790°N 82.059°W depth=5.0km (3.1mi)
Nearby Cities

12km (7mi) W of Edgefield, South Carolina
29km (18mi) NNE of Evans, Georgia
30km (19mi) N of Martinez, Georgia
33km (21mi) NNW of North Augusta, South Carolina
97km (60mi) WSW of Columbia, South Carolina


Des

reply to post by Destinyone

Thanks, hubby just got the AJC alert on his phone, and I came to check to see if updates were posted.

Aftershocks do seem a bit odd. Hoping that is all it is, and not pre-shocks. Think it's been a long, long, long time since there has been a sizeable quake in Ga. Not at all prepared for one now. Lol.

LionEatsSheep
An aftershock 2 days later? Really...?

I agree, and, although we have quakes infrequently, aftershocks at all are even more uncommon here.

We have few sensors, and though I have reported small quakes, or what I thought may be small quakes in my area, no new sensors have been added.

They jar my house, rattle the windows, even have a loud BOOM with them, but last mere seconds. Never get the swaying I have felt in Doraville, though. Just a sudden jarring, the rattling, Boom, and it's over. They happened frequently for a long time, but it's been over a year since I felt one.

Saw a comment earlier on mines, and remembered an article i had read a while back about land being procured for future mining sites in South Carolina, then found this on the USGS site ...

See figure 1

water.usgs.gov...

and a similar article about a land swap deal for gold mining
www.thestate.com...

Between mining/fracking, weird booms in the sky since 2 years going, underground military experiments, missing nukes dropped over SC, and recent threats to nuke SC if US doesn't deliver war to Syria pronto.. i'm convince aftershock(s) 2+ days 'late' raises ever more flags

2 days huh, weird. I would have expected one yesterday if at all... Didn't feel this one, probably too far away.

reply to post by NightFlight


I felt this one too. I just happened to be sitting this time. It was a slight rattle of the walls. I thought a big truck was going by or my son in the next room bumped the wall or something. It definitely caught my attention even though it wasn't much. Then I checked social media and sure enough many many others in my area felt it. I'm 18 miles from the epicenter. The news media said we can expect an aftershock from the Friday night quake, but I thought they meant later that night or the next day. Is it uncommon for aftershocks to be 2 days later? This area doesn't get earthquakes much, and when we do they go unnoticed because they are of such low magnitude. Does anyone think these are pre-shocks to a really large quake? I certainly hope not.

he snow causing earthquakes is new to me and the link you posted says So yes, a big snowstorm can raise the expected rate of earthquakes, but only ever so slightly

reply to post by violet


Yes, you're right, it does...and was news to me too. It's really not so much snow accumulation as it is ice. The snow itself isn't usually very deep, but when it snows there it does not melt because the temperatures do not allow. And for some reason, a snow out there is usually accompanied by a subsequent ice storm, which freezes on top of the snow in huge sheets and completely covers the trees. It freezes the car doors completely shut, and even the doors to people's houses too. The roads become covered in huge sheets of ice and are largely unstable for travel (even though there are plenty of people who try, and TONS of wrecks because of it) due to the fact that conditions don't stay that way through the whole winter as is the case up north, and adequate measures such as salting/sanding the roads are not taken. It is really silly, because this happens just about every year and you would think that they would prepare for it...go figure.

Thank you for mentioning sinkholes too...I never really thought about that either, so now I have something else to read up on I think the ice quakes are very interesting but not very likely in that particular region as it is not perpetually iced over, as you pointed out, however with the unusually high accumulation of ice and snow this year it may have just been enough to put stress on the area and contribute to triggering the quake. One of my buddies in Augusta, GA took lots of pictures of the ice and snow...going to ask him if he's cool with me sharing them with you guys. He lives less than 5 miles from the hospital where he works, but it took him almost an hour to get home the day of the quake because the ice was so thick...he had to keep stopping to chop at the ice on the windshield because it kept re-freezing. I don't miss that crap one tiny little bit!

Now, I'm off to read about sinkholes

I heard a noise this afternoon after I was thinking, wonder if there could be an aftershock? It came today it appears. At first I thought does one of my neighbors have a big truck outside? It didn't sound exactly the same. Then it stopped. Seems strange to be hearing the rumbling instead of feeling anything. My sister in California said you don't hear earthquakes but I have been hearing these. Usually when a big truck is outside, the engine revs up and then it goes away. This noise did not rev up like a truck.

When I heard about the February 14th earthquake in South Carolina and the one today, February 16th, I did not immediately think about the old threads about a nuke allegedly being moved and previous speculation about the October 8, 2013 earthquake in the area possibly being a nuke. Then I saw someone else asked on another thread whether the Feb 14 one could be a nuke and that sparked my memory of the old thread and speculations.

I did some digging to compare seismograph readings and found this old post by Zaphod on an old thread that compared nuke and earthquake seismograph signatures:

Zaphod58
This is the seismograph off South Carolina on the 8th of October. Notice how it's nice and long and drawn out? That's a standard earthquake signature. You have P waves and S waves, which are seen in every earthquake.

This shows the difference between a nuclear explosion, and an earthquake. Notice how the nuclear explosion is a short sharp hit, compared to a long drawn out blast. Here is a comparison between an Indian nuclear test, and an earthquake. They look nothing alike, and can't be confused .

I am not an expert in reading seismographs nor am I an earthquake expert. But Zaphod seems to be one of ATS's resident nuke experts, and that is what pretty much debunked the Oct 8, 2013 earthquake as not being a nuke. If those examples are indeed the difference and if an earthquake and a nuclear explosion "look nothing alike, and can't be confused," then I have to say that the seismographs of the Feb 14 and Feb 16 South Carolina quakes sure look short and sharp to me.

Feb 14 Seismograph about halfway down this WLTX news page.

SCGrits post with Feb 14 seismograph.

SCGrits
Here's Bird SC heliogram

And here's one from Feb 14 from TrueAmerican:

TrueAmerican

And here is one from Feb 16 from Olivine:

Olivine
Here is how it looks in GEE on station TA.Y55A.BHZ:

Here is a link to the station in Pauline, SC.

Like I said, I'm not an expert. And honestly I would be very surprised if the Feb 14 and Feb 16 tremors in South Carolina were caused by nukes rather than earthquakes. But in Zaphod's examples, these latest earthquakes sure look more like the nuke examples rather than the earthquake examples.

Can any experts here fill the rest of us in on what you think about this?

As far as animals acting strange, I have observed some strange things. Birds were chirping a lot a couple of weeks ago. I was thinking it's not spring yet, it's too early. I also spotted a flock of sea gulls. I've seen sea gulls in my area before but there's usually large coastal storms before they go over 200 miles inland. There are lots of rivers and lakes in the area though. Snow and ice came this past week. No birds chirping. It could have been storm related. Maybe an owl kept them quiet.

With ice and snow all over the place, I spotted the flock of sea gulls flying around the other day. Yesterday as I was leaving church, I spotted over a hundred robins. Apparently a very large flock arrived. It looked like a shooting gallery where you couldn't miss. I think the birds swarming a group of bushes with berries were robins too. I even saw more robins across town at my house and a relatives house. I didn't even know robins traveled in such large numbers.

Sea gulls, robins, lots of chirping one week, then silence the next week. I found it all strange. I live closer to Greenville than Augusta. I am not close to any coastal area.

reply to post by orionthehunter


My sister also mentioned a startling amount of birds flying around and thought she was seeing things because they were flying around with all of the ice and subzero wind chill. She said the day before, she went outside for a smoke and the air was so still it was eerie...her neighbors have goats, roosters and other critters that are always making noise and there was nothing but dead silence out there, even though she could see the animals in their pens. They cover the pens with heavy tarps and stuff them with hay so the animals will be warm, but you can still hear them and they were making no noise at all.

She also answered my question about why she stated the quake didn't seem "normal". She said for one thing, they heard a huge "boom" and then a really loud rumbling noise for about ten seconds before the house started to shake, and the shaking was a rocking kind of motion versus a vibration...a see-sawing motion, which my friends in Edgefield, Evans and Augusta, GA all reported as well.

As a former military man I can say that the earthquake was similar to mortar style combat situations. Honestly, my first thought was The Savannah Nuclear Factory or similar.

Just thought I'd share what we felt.

We live here in Aiken, SC, which is not too far from the epicenter.

Without power, we were going to bed early, so my wife and I were in bed when it hit. I was just falling asleep, when I snapped awake from my wife saying: "Holy crap! What the hell was that?" along with a loud rumbling and our house shaking.

I mumbled something about "Dorchester fault line maybe." and promptly fell back to sleep.

I rode a lot of 6.x and 7.x in Naples, Italy in the early 80's, so that little shake was just that for me: little.

However, when you're in the dark with no power from an massive ice storm, you do have to wonder if mother nature is out to get you after you also get hit with an earthquake!