Quake to Hit Los Angeles By September 5th (6.4 Richter or Higher)

Sydney Morning Herald & Agence France Presse ^ | April 15, 2004 | wire staff

[threat matrix]

A US geophysicist has set the scientific world ablaze by claming to have cracked the holy grail: accurate earthquake prediction, and warning that a big one will hit southern California by September 5.

Russian born UCLA professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok says he can forsee major quakes by tracking minor tremblers and historical patterns in seismic hotspots that could indicate more violent shaking is on the way.

And he has made the chilling prediction that a quake measuring at least 6.4 magintude on the Richter scale will hit a 32,000 square km area of southern California bt September 5.

The team at the UCLA Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics accurately predicted a 6.5 magnitude earthquake in central California last December as well as an 8.1 magnitude trembler that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September.

A major quake will hit an area that stretches across desert regions to the east of Los Angeles, home to about nine million people, including the Mojave desert and the resort town of Palm Springs, which lies near the notorious San Andreas fault.

[Conservative4Ever]

Well OK if you're gonna get picky....7:28pm.

Red

[John H K]

I've recommended these books before but if you have even the slightest interest in geology, you should get the series of books by John McPhee where he traveled across the country with a series of Geologists (Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain,. Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California, and now all together in one book, Annals of the Former World, with an added 5th section contained within it about the Midwest.)

Anyway, in Basin and Range, McPhee sits at a diner in a small Nevada town, and the geologist explains that he thinks in millions of years the Gulf of California will run up into Nevada and all of California will split off, and then McPhee wanders around the town asking people what they think of that, and he gets some hilarious answers :-)

[RS]

Sure going to screw up insurance rates if they do...

[no_problema]

can't wait!

some folks will leave and real estate prices will go down.

[BossLady]

BOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Not on my birthday....come on now....... ;)

[rwfromkansas]

Indeed.

[boris]

"It's literally physically impossible to have a 10.5 quake in California, or anywhere else for that matter."

I am not a geologist but my understanding is that the scale is 'open ended'. Yes it is logarithmic but 'impossible'? I'd like proof. For example: if a five-mile-wide asteroid hit outside L.A. do you think a 10.5 reading might be recorded?

If I recall correctly, there have been massive events (100,000 years ago) which may have reached a much larger magnitude than the biggest we can imagine.

How large was the New Madrid quake?

What was the 'richter' magnitude of the Deccan Steps event, or the last time the Ring of Fire went off all at once?...

I do recall seeing somewhere that 14 would mean planetary disintegration...don't know if so.

--Boris

[djf]

Actually, the Baja peninsula will continue to get longer. California will split down the middle, with everything west of the central valley being part of the (longer) Baja.

My personal thoughts about the greatest quake window this year is:

Very near the time of the transit of Venus, the first one in about 150 yrs., occurring June 8th.

[boris]

That's why I won't move there. If you get your biggie it's gonna reduce Bill Gates' property values.

A big quake could set off Mt. Rainier, and oh, brother...

--Boris

[logcabinman]

I think It's Hillary's Fault,I think it's Deeper than the Marianes Trench and wider than the Grand Canyon.We better hope that it never Erupts.

[John H K]

I did mention that with a really big asteroid you could perhaps get above 10.

Obviously no accurate measurement at the time, but certainly none of the New Madrid quakes were over 9, and I've seen a few papers revising the estimates downward under 8 so that they're no longer the largest continental US earthquakes.

The "Ring of Fire" has never gone off all at once, or anything close to that, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.

The Deccan Traps were a large-scale volcanic event, but not an instaneous one, that outflow was still over a period of years.

The point is energy is a matter of physics, and you can't generate a 10+ without the sufficent fault surface to do so; You'd need a fault encircling the globe all going at once, and there's nothing like that, or remotely like that, on earth.

[Redcloak]

They've predicted a quake out in the desert; not in L.A.. Other than messing with the dove opener if it happens too close to September 1st, quakes out there don't do much to us. In fact, they're kinda fun. The big ones don't even do much around Palm Springs. My folks have ridden out a few 7+ quakes there with little more than a few pictures getting knocked over on one table.

[John H K]

Err, well, the Gulf of California will get longer to the North, with eventually the sliver west of the San Andreas splitting off with a narrow gulf between it and the rest of California, and then the sliver takes off north (including the current Baja as the south end.)

HOWEVER, it seems quite possible for this "sliver" to either be joined by ANOTHER much larger area breaking off separately, or the sliver "widening" before it separates, to the EAST side of the Sierra Nevada.

You'll notice the "Great Restraining Bend" of the San Andreas north of LA. It changes from running SE-NW to running E-W, then SE-NW again (and that bend has helped form the high mountains north of Los Angeles.)

There's clear evidence that the main Pacific Plate/North American plate fault break may already be re-routing itself to the East of the current San Andreas up through the Mojave. And eventually to the East of the Sierra Nevada.

Actually the issue of where the North American Plate ends and the Pacific Plate ends is tricky; it isn't a clear boundary on the San Andreas.

Actually part of the NW motion of the Pacific Plate extends all the way East to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah, so the "boundary" between the two plates actually extends that far East.....in Nevada much of it is a "stretching" motion as Nevada gets wider and pulls to the NW some.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Okay, so Bush now knows. What's he going to do about it?

< / sarcasm>

[GoRepGo]

Note to self: buy future ocean front property in Yuma.

You know, that thought has long been bantered around this area of Arizona since I was a wee child. However, with the Colorado River on the endangered list, beachfront property doesn't sound like a bad idea.

[Joe Hadenuf]

LOL!

[BurbankKarl]

Good...clear some of the suckers out of here

[A CA Guy]

If Star Jones is doing The View out here and sits down at any time in CA, could happen...

[cmsgop]

Great Timing on this, My parents just moved into their new Palm Springs Home Today......, I'm sure they will be thrilled....

[SevenofNine]

Yeah rack that reset

F**** You I am going to Hollywood