Earthquakes Fascinate Me

II.PFO.10.BH1.2015.149.07.05.59.000-2015.149.07.16.59.000

Earthquakes fascinate me. It’s probably the math. Maps, graphs and charts appeal to me. Weather and quakes are well documented numerically. Similar love affair.

An email just came in for a magnitude 7.0, 111km NNW of Chirikof Island, Alaska. Chirikof is one of the Aleutian Islands. New fact for me too.

The Aleutians formed where the Pacific Plate attempts to slide beneath the North American Plate. That’s called a subduction zone. The movement here is 2-3″ per year. Earthquakes are expected where there are 57 volcanoes!

earthquake.usgs.gov earthquakes tectonic images aleutian_tsum.pdf

Magnitude 7.0 is enough to get my attention. I’m happy to report this quake was a dud. It would have been felt had anyone been nearby to feel it.

Along with the Aleutian’s punishing weather,

This region exhibits intense volcanic activity and has a history of megathrust earthquakes. – USGS

It’s mostly left alone. However, the area does produce plenty of quake emails for me.

The San Andreas Fault runs down the east side of the Palm Springs area. Tiny quakes there aren’t unusual. My TV threshold for mentioning is magnitude 3.

Where I live the ground is more stable. We’re told it’s not in an earthquake zone. Until it is.

I was fascinated by quakes before I left Connecticut. More so now.

M7.0   111km NNW of Chirikof Island  Alaska

2 thoughts on “Earthquakes Fascinate Me”

  1. Hope you are still fascinated when its your bed that’s shaking! I am not berating you Geoff, just commenting. Better to be fascinated than panic stricken, like my friend’s son gets everytime they get one in the LA area!

  2. In a rare occurrence, back in April, northeast Connecticut started to experience several hundred micro quakes. Some of these were in the 3.6 range. It was very scary to some degree, as the experts said that these quakes MIGHT be precursors to abig quake. Many people in eastern CT would watch water in their glass move all day.

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