Posted on 09/30/2020 6:03:05 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The swarm happening now south of the Salton Sea, near Westmoreland is over 30 km south of the end of the San Andreas. It is in the Brawley seismic zone, a common source of swarms. So far largest is M4.4. Too far from the San Andreas to change the probability of a quake on it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcpalmsprings.com ...
Didn’t feel anything here in Texas.
Right where the military planes just “crash landed”.
So... is the Baja California going to break away yet?
If a big earthquake occurs, it will be Trump’s fault. /s
Did not hear about that....darn.
Hmmm, do we have a kaboom on the way? Actually they are south of the the volcano.
You guys need to send us some of your hurricane remnants. We could really use the precipitation.
Just aftershocks from that hard landing by the KC-130.
From four years ago to the day):
A geologist explains how the Salton Sea quake swarm could trigger ‘the big one’
https://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2016/09/30/52441/geologist-explains-how-salton-sea-quake-swarm-coul/
A quake swarm in the Salton Sea that lasted over 24 hours from Monday into Tuesday has created a short-term increase in the risk of waking up the San Andreas fault.
“A swarm is when you have, in a tight geographic region, a cluster of earthquakes happen in rapid succession,” says Kate Scharer, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “It’s an area that often just has generic background seismicity but, for some reason, sort of pipes up for a while and lets off earthquakes.”
By the time all was said and done, over 200 earthquakes had been recorded in the more than day-long period.
The reason, Scharer says, is because the quake swarm happened below the southernmost tip of the San Andreas fault, an area that hasn’t produced a quake since 1680. They say that the odds of a magnitude-7 quake or larger happening in the southern area of the fault is as high as 1 in 100 and as low as 1 in 3,000.
“That’s related to the general statistics of how these swarms happen,” says Scharer. “Some of the folks at the USGS collect data on this type of behavior, the swarm behavior, and then try to understand and model what you can expect from the future. So, in general, they would have similar forecasts, given that the magnitude distribution is fairly similar.”
The good news is that these odds decrease over time, but researchers say that it’s still a real enough risk to worry, and that a quake swarm like the one earlier this week are worth watching because, as Scharer notes, these smaller quakes could be what sets off a larger quake along San Andreas.
“Worldwide, you can see lots of cases where you have an earthquake on a subsidiary fault that’s not on the main strand that then is followed in short order by a larger rupture. The earthquakes that they had in Christchurch in New Zealand happened this way, or in kind of a bigger way, the Denali Fault rupture was kind of like that. We know that there’s some transfer of stress from these faults onto the main San Andreas due to their orientation, so there is some communication between them.”
Seismologists say the San Andreas fault is long overdue to rupture since a large-scale quake happens in the area every 150-200 years.
Maybe California will break off and become its own country.
“The swarm happening now south of the Salton Sea, near Westmoreland is over 30 km south of the end of the San Andreas. It is in the Brawley seismic zone, a common source of swarms. So far largest is M4.4. Too far from the San Andreas to change the probability of a quake on it”.
Well, they say that if one wants to disappear and stay disappeared, the Salton Sea is the place to do it. I guess a few shakes and rattles goes with the anonymity.
I used to live in this general area - born in El Centro, grew up in Brawley and Imperial. I still have vivid memories of the 6.4 quake in 1979, one of which is sitting in the living room and watching our entertainment center come crashing to the floor inches from my feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Imperial_Valley_earthquake
the labor pains have started.
Certainly hope she is right. I mean it’s one thing to say that these shakers won’t trigger the Big One, and another to say that the processes which caused these shakers will not also trigger the Big One.
Yeah. I mean, when the swarms get happening how good ARE they really at being so sure of where it’s going to be.
Worked disaster assistance for that event. If you came by the Disaster Assistance Center afterwards it set up, I was there.
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