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Discussion » Statements » Rosie's Corner » Are you interested or disinterested in EARTHQUAKES? Have you ever experienced one or never?

Are you interested or disinterested in EARTHQUAKES? Have you ever experienced one or never?

In the 4th Century B.C. Aristotle said that earthquakes were caused by winds trapped in caves.

In California there are two "plates" that slip/slide causing earthquakes. The PACIFIC PLATE which consists of the Pacific Ocean floor, Baja California and the California Coastline. The NORTH AMERICAN PLATE consists of the North American continent, parts of Inland California, and parts of the ATLANTIC and ARCTIC OCEANS floors. "Earthquake weather" is described as hot, calm. Early on it was calm cloudy conditions usually preceded by strong winds, fireballs, meteors. Later is was said certain cloud formations could be used to predict earthquakes. Recent research finds a correlation between a sudden relative spike in atmospheric temperature 2-5 days before an earthquake.

Now California is "blessed? with the San Andreas fault which runs 800 miles long and ten miles deep. Two smaller faults are in Hayward and San Jacinto. We live in Hemet. Next door to San Jacinto. So of course Earthquakes are of immediate interest to me 24/7.

Connecting weather with earthquakes is called PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC by some. Whatever you call it matters not at all. When THE BIG ONE strikes it will get everyone's attention. We'll be right smack dab in the middle of it.
Do you live in earthquake country too? I know because of all the FRACKING going on in Oklahoma they get bazillions of "small" earthquakes. Mother nature doesn't want anyone digging around inside her. She is going to strike back. Do you blame her?

Posted - July 18, 2021

Responses


  • 10636
    I experienced 2 just the other week.  4.9 and 3.8?   Then there was 4.? back in May.

    There is no such thing as earthquake weather.  (my mom used to think there was).

    This State is riddled with fault lines.  There's an OLD fault line up the hill from here, where one side is serpentine  and the other granite.  
      July 18, 2021 11:04 AM MDT
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  • 113301
    And yet m'dear how long have we been told we are DUE for THE BIG ONE? Any day now. Any week. Any month. Maybe this year? There is some sort of connection allegedly apparently. I asked a question about it. "Recent research finds a correlation between a sudden relative spike in atmospheric temperature 2-5 days before an earthquake." True or Faux? I don't know. Thank you for your reply! :)

    We don't need another San Francisco or Nimitz Freeway collapse. I have no idea what we'll get when it comes. This post was edited by RosieG at July 18, 2021 11:23 AM MDT
      July 18, 2021 11:22 AM MDT
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  • 10636
    The quake that collapsed the Nimitz and part of the bay bridge was called the Loma Prieta quake.  I didn't feel it, but it knocked stuff off the shelves in my garage.

    I hope all these "little ones" relieve enough plate stress that we won't get the 'big one".  Of course, if one's near the epicenter of a 6.5 or higher, they might think that it's the "big one".
      July 18, 2021 1:10 PM MDT
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  • 19937
    I have never experienced an earthquake.  I don't believe Aristotle was correct that it has to do with the weather.  I do believe that there are fault lines in the earth which move and cause quakes.  New York has six fault lines which run through Manhattan, which would cause minor trouble.  Upstate New York is supposedly criss-crossed with fault lines and Rochester had a 2.6 quake in March 2020.  
      July 18, 2021 1:20 PM MDT
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  • 3719
    I think the "earthquake weather" idea is a suggestion that air-pressure changes might trigger an earthquake on the point of happening anyway, but I suspect it's really down to people correlating events not actually connected.

    The really big shocks are due to ocean-floor plates being 'subducted' (carried below) the much thicker continental plates. The enormous friction of one plate sliding against the other leads to a slow stick-slip action, and the tremors are the vibrations of the sudden slips.  The subducted rock sinks into the very viscous molten rock of the plant's Mantle, and gradually melts - feeding the very gassy, dangerously explosive volcanoes characteristic of this "recycling".

    The subduction compensates for new plate being formed along plate boundaries along the ocean floor; and/or the bounding continent(s) moving - on average at about an inch a year.

    To complicate matters on the West Coast of the USA, are enormous transverse faults, where one slab is being pushed horizontally along the side of another. This can for example shear a road or a field, and push one section a distance (called the throw) to the side of the other. 

    These things do have their own anatomies. An earthquake's epicentre is the point of maximum disturbance on the surface above its focus, the centre of the area that has moved. A fault, of which there are four main types, has a fault-plane which is the buried surface of the fracture itself, and its fault-line is the trace of the fault plane's intersection with the land surface.

    ++++=

    TO answer your question more closely, I am interested in earthquakes as part of a wider interest in geology; but disinterested because I do not live in a seismically active area. Though despite that, the British Isles has two rather dubious claims to fame: they have among the largest yearly number of cyclones and earthquakes in the world! (I believe Holland has more cyclones.)

    The difference is of course that ours, both the whirlwinds and the tremors, are far smaller and rarely cause any damage. Many of the earthquakes in England are tiny shocks from old mines collapsing; but we still have plenty of natural ones, and some of those are strong enough to be noticeable by people. Most are only detected on seismographs.

    Why do we have them? One thought is that of lingering traces of our corner of the European Continental Plate still rebounding from the loss of the Last Glacial Maximum's ice cover, whose mass had depressed the Crust into the underlying Mantle. NW Scotland is rising while SE England is sinking, at a couple of millimetres a year if I recall aright. As it springs slowly back the stress changes are absorbed by small slips on very deep faults, hence the shocks. I've also wondered if they are responses to pressure from the spreading Atlantic sea-floor: the North American and NW European continents are gently rotating apart.

    Greenland is losing its ice-cover and will probably experience lots of small earthquakes in the process.

    As for so-called "fracking" (horrible non-technical slang)... reported tremors allegedly from hydraulic fracturing in the States, created panic when the oil companies wanted to use the process in England. What they could not get across to the public, and especially to ignorant campaigners, here, were that the geology and depths involved here were different, and the Government had put very low (probably unfeasibly low) limits on allowable tremors that would be too small to notice anyway!

      July 18, 2021 4:38 PM MDT
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