Swarm of Quakes have Experts Concerned
Page Last Updated: Friday April 15, 2011 10:09am PDT
Brooke Boone MyNews4.com
" It's a little bit concerning in a sense.. The largest earthquakes in these sequences are pretty large in size." Graham Kent is Director of Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada Reno. He says there have been hundreds of earthquakes southwest of Hawthorne over the past few days. The largest-- recorded at a 4.4 in size.
"These are the biggest in a sequence we've seen at least in the last couple of years." Kent says unlike the 2008 quakes in Somersett that damaged so many homes, these earthquakes are fortunately not underneath a community.
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| From Lucky Boy Pass looking back towards Hawthorne |
Size is not the only reason Kent says they are watching the swarm of quakes closely. The location of these quakes is on top of a fault that has until now remained unknown or has not been active. Kent then made an eerie comparison, "Whats really interesting about most of these earthquakes we've experienced. Short of the Chilean and Japanese; Haiti, Baha, even Christchurch.. Were on unknown faults.
But Kent says just because those devastating quakes happened on un-named faults does not mean that the series of quakes near Hawthorne will lead to a big quake there. Reno, Carson City and the Las Vegas valley all lie on top of fault lines. And right now, there is no way to predict where the next big quake will occur.
"That's yet another reason why you don't want to look at the map and go phew, I'm safe. We're in earthquake country and so we have to be prepared.
April 11, 2011 – LAS VEGAS, Nv. - Eight earthquakes have erupted along the border of Nevada and California. The strongest quake in the Nevada swarm has been a 4.2 registering at a depth of 13 km. This is the 10th swarm to take place on the planet in the last 48 hours- including double swarms along regions of Greece. -The Extinction Protocol
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Contributing Sources:
Brooke Boone, bboone@mynews4.com
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These earthquakes seem to be kicking off magma harmonic tremors, which may indicate volcanism. We also just had a 3.0 right at Mammoth Mountain which is an active volcano. I say quite a bit about it on my Blogspot page. Just see http://www. geologycrawl.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteIt may give some understanding of the possible nature of this swarm. A bunch of engineers and I heading up there in a few days to check it out.