Posted on 03/15/2015 7:00:21 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Earlier this week, the U.S. Geological Survey released a new study, which concluded that California faces a bigger chance of experiencing a powerful earthquake in the next 30 years than previous studies had predicted.
Non-seismologists who just glanced at the news headlines about the study -- including ours -- may have been left worrying that the risk of "The Big One" is now greater, due to some alarming change in Earthquake faults.
But the explanation is actually more complicated, though not necessarily more comforting. The upside is that recent discoveries about the nature of earthquakes and how they spread, coupled with advances in supercomputer software and monitoring technology, now enable scientists to make more accurate predictions about future quakes.
The Third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, also known as UCERF3, used those conceptual and technological advances to predict that the chances of an 8.0 or greater event -- roughly, the equivalent of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 -- rocking the state in the next 30 years has increased from 4.7 percent to 7.0 percent. Meanwhile, the chances of significant but less-than-catastrophic quakes in the 6.5 to 7.0 range actually has gone down slightly in the new forecast.
The big reason for the difference from previous forecasts is that scientists have figured out how to solve a longstanding limitation in earthquake prediction models, according to Tom Jordan, a University of Southern California professor of earth sciences and one of the study's authors.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Big Deal; it’s going to happen some day, nobody knows when.
Just hope I am not in Downey when it happens.
Not all of us; my farm is in northern Ca. I am just waiting for Lassen or Shasta to go boom.
The past few thousand years - just a blip in the lifetime of Earth - has allowed the human race to flourish.
But...this is only temporary.
Yeah, Mammoth Mountain overlooks Long Valley.
The chance of an 8.0 (Calif)has increased from 4.7% to 7% in the next 30 years.
I believe the last prediction given for the Pacific Northwest was a 50% chance in the next 50 years for a 9.0.
Anybody heard commentary on the string of earth quakes off the coast from Eureka and inland to Nevada? Looks like the start of a zipper.
If California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing
Until I pay my bill
-Warren Zevon
I meant Yellowstone
There is a geological theory that says very large quakes shock the entire Ring of Fire and these shocks cause pressure buildups.
In the last 10 years, there have been very large quakes in Indonesia, Japan and moderate ones in New Zealand, Mexico and South America.
The only area NOT hit by a moderate/large quake has been Western USA.
I suspect the next major quake might be off the OR/WA coast.
and look for it in April.
So glad to see this image. My house down the coast in the distance looks fine. Whew.
I see your humor but I am semi-serious.
Earthquake theory is a hobby of mine after I took Geology in college back in the 80’s.
I don’t expect any major quakes in the USA right now as nothing seems to be building but i do monitor the activity daily.
Other than some small activity on the Cascade Fault the last year, the West Coast has been fairly quiet.
Interestingly I did predict a major quake on the Kamchatka Peninsula a couple years ago base on a change in precursors.
The area I don’t understand is all the activity in NW Nevada/S OR in the last 3 years.
Its seismic history looks like a new volcano but this would be very rare.
...Cascade -> Cascadia Fault.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Editor, Writer
What do Dems do when they begin to fail? Chicken little...
FALSE FLAG events.. domestic covert gov’t terrorist cells..
blame it one muzzies or republicans..
-OR- BOTH..
Cool.. 38.8 million fewer liberals.
I read a great description of the “earthquake ecology” beneath California.
“Imagine you had 50 panes of glass. You lay one on the floor, then hit it somewhere randomly with a hammer, breaking it. Then you lay another pane on top of it, and hit it in a different relative place than the first, breaking it.
“When you have done all 50 panes of glass, the pile of broken panes is a good approximation of the earthquake faults. Several of the “faults” are similar in some of the panes, so it appears there are larger and smaller “faults”.”
I was not joking. Most of the quakes happen it seems in the spring months, particularly it seems, April.
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