An Experiment in Alternative Methods of Earthquake Prediction

reply to post by JustMike


JustMike, I know you to be a very balanced poster on this site and I'm a Memphis resident. What are you seeing that indicates we may have earthquake activity here? I bookmarked this thread some time ago and all but forgot about it, so if you have already posted information regarding this activity related to Memphis, please share again.\y
Thanks.

reply to post by justsaying

Hi justsaying,

thanks for your post and your query. Yes, I try to maintain a balanced perspective where quakes are concerned. While this thread is about investigating prediction methods, I always bear in mind that anything we post may be read by people who could potentially be affected.

For the prediction you referred to, I'm looking at a combination of factors. The first is what I call an "indication" and I have discussed what that means in this context in some earlier posts on the previous page. The second is what I have been seeing on some seismos online for the region (meaning in near-real-time), because the traces are rather puzzling.

Here is an example. It's a screen shot of two seismos I've been watching on GEE**. The top one (or at least its Z component) is TA.W44A, which is located in Memphis, TN. The other, with its E, N and Z components displayed***, is TA.X41A, in a place called Bauxite, just SW of Little Rock, AR:


** GEE is the Global Earthquake Explorer, a wonderful piece of software from the University of South Carolina that lets you watch seismos online. It's available free from their website here.
***I'm referring to the BHE, BHN and BHZ displays for the seismos. Simply put, the "E" displays ground movement east to west (and vice versa, of course), the "N" is for the movement north and south, and the "Z" is for up and down (vertical) movement.

While the amplitude of these E, N and Z traces is quite small, with the movement imperceptible to humans, their density is greater than that on most seismos. I'm trying to work out why that is. It suggests that there is quite a lot of very rapid change in movement going on (albeit in very small amounts) and this is bothersome to me.

However, it doesn't have to mean that anything is imminent, and neither does my "indication" that I mentioned. Although "indicators" have generally given me the best results with posted predictions, I am sometimes totally wrong. And I won't be unhappy if that turns out to be the case this time.

All the same, I feel it's better to post when I get something, rather than say nothing and later wish I had.

By the way, have you ever read Nuttli's compilation of newspaper reports from 1811/12 where witnesses describe the quakes that occurred then? It's quite a read but well worth the time. If you don't have a copy you can get one here at the Saint Louis University website.

Meanwhile, if you observe anything unusual in your region, then please post. I'm especially interested in odd behaviour in animals, or reports from people of strange ringing in the ears (which they can't attribute to tinnitus from normal aging), ditto reports of nausea with no known etiology, or even anecdotal reports of feelings or unease from people who you would not normally consider to be highly impressionable or given to flights of fancy.

As for animals, any reported sightings of snakes and/or frogs out in the open would be very important, as I understand it's fairly cold there right now and these creatures should be hibernating. (Correct me if I'm wrong in this for your region.) In terms of general observations, reports of sudden changes in water levels in wells and/or ponds, along with any odd odors (sulfur smells especially) could be quite significant.

Best regards and many thanks,

Mike

reply to post by JustMike


I`m not sure where in Bauxite the seismo is located,but there are many things there that may cause problems with the readings. Heavy freight train traffic, and Alcoa plants are located there. There is also a lot of logging in that area.

For what its worth, my husband and I have had severe migraines since yesterday afternoon, and ears have been ringing off of the charts. I am hoping its a combo of rainy weather and solar storm causing it. My dogs were doing their "Walking on their tip-toes" thing that they do when they are uncomfortable with the ground (never did that before the quakes last year) . They are large, outside dogs.

Also have noticed a decided absence of birds in the yard today.

I hope its nothing other than cloudy weather, We are supposed to get severe storms Sunday afternoon and overnight Sunday.

If I see a snake I promise you`ll probably be able to hear me screeching!

If I notice anything else,I`ll post it.

reply to post by JustMike


Will do JustMike, and thanks for your quick response. I have the GEE app, I used to monitor this stuff and stay active on the earthquake threads for some time until school had started taking up all of my time. I can easily report that I myself have had ringing in my ears last night and today accompanied by nausea and some dull headaches. Of course this can be attributed to to other things like ear fluid or illness (which I dont have), but also to seismic activity, and I have observed this in the past when quakes were heating up in Arkansas some time back. I have also have had two days of not feeling right and cannot place where this is coming from (I am a nursing student so I am always trying to pinpoint where physical imbalances are coming from). I will keep an eye out with the animals around here as well, I have cats right now with 4 that live outside (they have great shelter so the animal activists dont get mad at me) but there are dogs in all the yards next to mine so I will keep an eye out with them as well. And of course observe for the other things that you mentioned. I will be back when there is more to report here. I am just north of Memphis and yes, its in the 30's outside at 2:30 pm.

Had a very strong ringing in my ears last night out of the blue followed by headaches and just feeling really unsteady, was enough to put me in bed a few hours earlier than usual. Probably nothing to do with anything brewing in Tennessee since I'm in California, we're always shaking. I just haven't felt anything in a very long time on my stretch of the San Andreas.

Not sure if there is any relevance or not, but regardless FYI, the Memphis area has been issued a weather alert starting tomorrow afternoon for strong winds, hail and possible tornados. Today its 36 for a high, tomorrow its going to be 66. Strange weather we have been having this winter, with unusually warm temps and I don't recall there being tornado watches for this time of year, they usually start forecasting those in late February.

Also, a small but informal polling of friends indicates the majority have had nausea, headaches, dizziness, and tinnitus for last couple of days, even one reported feeling the hospital floor she was working on felt like someone very large was walking her floor. None of them are sick with a colds or flu which would be normal for this time of year and account for these symptoms, but all reporting they don't feel right.

I am in Memphis, Tn...... had a short but intense ringing in right ear last night.

I have had headaches(pretty short and painful) for the last week or so....

However, my cat seems to be fine.....will watch her like a hawk.

A funny thing is happening as I type this post....I feel pretty dizzy..... must be ATSitus.

I will keep you posted.....Thanks for the heads up; I hope you are wrong.

reply to post by radpetey


radpetey,

I've actually been feeling worse today myself, but since I am linking it to the probability of it being related to seismic activity, I can also chalk it up to the power of suggestion. So I just mentioned whats been happening the last few days when I had no clue. But yeah, today seems worse.

reply to post by justsaying


You know its funny.... I was joking about my dizziness being ATSitus, but I am getting worried as I am as dizzy as I have ever been in my whole life.

I really hope I am not about to stroke out or something.

reply to post by radpetey


Well I hope you are not about to stroke out as well! There is a link somewhere relating these very small seismic waves that can't physically be felt to all the symptoms we are having, but when my hard drive crashed during the summer I lost the bookmark. I will try to research it later and if I find it I will post it here.

So far I've not observed any abnormal activity with the animals. Its pretty cold here, the coldest it's been in a few days, and all the animals seem hunkered down at this time and are being very quiet and not showing any signs of anxiety or agitation. Tomorrow it will warm up so maybe at that time it will be easier to observe anything out of the ordinary for them. Did not see any birds at all today.

reply to post by JustMike


Starts to type & sighs.....

Haven't posted on here lately either. Been feeling things when there seems to be nothing happening, & not feeling anything when there is something!!! Unless I'm feeling it ahead of time....but I would think I would continue to feel it until one happened? I don't know what to think anymore!

Last night & today my hubby asked me if I had read that anyone was feeling something. A few days ago he knew something different was going to happen before the double 6's by the Shetland Islands. He felt more pressure, but not like a single bigger quake would be. That might be the first time since we started paying attention, that there was a double that close in time!
We were outside today sled riding with some of the grandkids. He went in the house before we were done, saying he was getting too cold. I found out later, that was an excuse! He was feeling 'weird'! When I came inside, I saw the 6.3 in Mexico. Looks like that had happened about a half hour before we went out. So the timing was off for him too! Very weird!!!

Last night I was on the couch & felt just the arm of it move. Thought I was imagining things. A couple of minutes later I felt it again only almost imperceptible that time. If I hadn't felt the first one, I probably wouldn't have noticed the second!
Later on after I went to bed I felt the bed wiggle. Thought the cat had jumped up on it...no cat! I felt it three or four times. Thought I was getting restless leg syndrome or something! It was more noticeable than the couch was.
Our house is on a basement, bedroom is on the second floor. We have never felt anything here before except Virginia's 5.8 in August. Even when I heard the 'Seneca Guns' right before Chile's big one, I didn't feel any movement!
We live in north central Pennsylvania. I check USGS 1.0+ every day...nothing!

Couldn't sleep much the last two nights either. For no reason.
Yesterday the cats were sleeping in front of the doorway by the computer. Nothing seems unusual about that except the male is always chasing the female away. We've had the male for 15 years & the female for over one. He's still very territorial. They never get that close to each other!
They were staying close by me before the double 6's too.

Remembered about dogs running away when I was reading the paper today. Four or five FOUND dogs in the last week or so. We live in a smaller town, have never seen that many before, much less in that short of a time span! When you were saying about Memphis I started wondering if we could be feeling something starting to move here? Pretty far away, but if there is a fault line in common who knows?!

Guess I'm going to have to pay more attention than I usually do & take notes! The memory was the second thing to go.
WOQ

Having some really bad nausea right now, had to get myself out of bed to grab the Pepto. I am liking the term "ATSitus", hope that's all it is. No ear ringing in the last 24 hours though. Or perhaps still recovering from jet lag a week later. Stay safe all.

Originally posted by dragonlover12
reply to post by JustMike

 

I`m not sure where in Bauxite the seismo is located,but there are many things there that may cause problems with the readings. Heavy freight train traffic, and Alcoa plants are located there. There is also a lot of logging in that area.

Cultural noise (meaning human activity that affects seismo traces) is a good point to consider and we have seen numerous examples of this over the past few years in places like Yellowstone, for example. So, I had wondered myself if cultural noise was possibly the problem in this case, but after checking the Bauxite seismo's location on Google Earth, I found that it's actually around 4 ½ miles south of the town, in a meadow by a stretch of forest, and there is not much around that would cause problems.

Here's a screenshot from Google Earth showing the location of the Bauxite (AR) seismo. The location is very slightly off by I'd guess some dozens of yards, but it gives us a fair idea of the surroundings:


And here's the shot for TA.W44A in Memphis:


I got the lat. and long. details for seismo TA.X41A from the IRIS DMC Metadata page here. The IRIS page for TA.W44A is here.

One other thing that led me to exclude cultural noise in this case is that such a similar trace showed on both the Bauxite seismo and the one in Memphis, and these are located around 150 miles apart. Besides this point, I also observed these traces in the morning hours here (in Prague, Czech Republic), when it would have been only around 3 or 4 a.m. in AR and TN. Not a lot of cultural noise at that time of day, and if there is, it tends to be spasmodic and not continuous and almost unvaried in its intensity. Where there is unvaried cultural noise even at that time of day it's usually very easy to pinpoint, but there seems to be nothing at either seismo location to account for it.

Here's a photo of TA.X41A (Image from Earthscope at UCSD's website here)


and here's TA.W44A (Image from Earthscope at UCSD's website here)


As you can see, the locations seem ideal, so it's unlikely that cultural noise would intervene a great deal in both cases and show such similar traces. But all the same it was worth mentioning and I thank you for that.

Just to finish off the image/seismo comparison, here's a shot I took a few minutes ago, showing W44A (Memphis, TN) and X41A (Near Bauxite, AR) at around 1500 hours UTC (GMT) today:

The two traces are displaying at the same scale (microns/sec). Note that X41A, especially, is not quite so “dense” as it was yesterday, with the contrast between its trace and the Memphis one being more marked. In fact, what we see on X41A is pretty normal and something you'd see on many seismos on a typical, seismically pretty quiet day.

I'll be keeping an eye on this and hoping that nothing significant happens. But whether there is a quake or not in the next few days, this is still something worth documenting for future reference.

For what its worth, my husband and I have had severe migraines since yesterday afternoon, and ears have been ringing off of the charts. I am hoping its a combo of rainy weather and solar storm causing it. My dogs were doing their "Walking on their tip-toes" thing that they do when they are uncomfortable with the ground (never did that before the quakes last year) . They are large, outside dogs.

Also have noticed a decided absence of birds in the yard today.

I hope its nothing other than cloudy weather, We are supposed to get severe storms Sunday afternoon and overnight Sunday.

If I see a snake I promise you'll probably be able to hear me screeching!

If I notice anything else, I`ll post it.

Thanks for the observations. It's interesting – especially the dogs and the lack of birds. But as you said, if there are storms on the way then animals (and you also) could be reacting to pressure changes. (I'm quite sensitive to weather fluctuations myself and in fact I feel rotten today. Our weather has been weird lately. Yesterday it snowed in the morning then in the afternoon it warmed up and down came the rain.)

Many thanks to everyone who's posted. I'll write more later when I'm feeling up to it.

Mike

reply to post by JustMike


I checked on that location in Bauxite last night, and its actually about 8 miles (plus or minus 2) east of me as the crow flies. There is a huge swampy area next to that location. There is some logging going on, but they are well south of the Alcoa plant.

I noticed a couple of birds this morning (misty and cold outside as I type) but there are usually dozens of them ,even in these weather conditions. My dogs were very "clingy" this morning . They seem distracted by something.... just off for them. No snakes (thank heavens!!!) or frogs seen.

I hope you feel better!

I`ll pop in if anything else develops.

Thank you for all that you do, and thanks for the song! I have it downloaded and play it every morning. Amazing job!

reply to post by JustMike


Hey Mike, just wanted to chime in on the Memphis location for TA.W44A, which is located not too far from the community college I attend. This area is pretty secluded and away from the traffic and highways, even though it's located within the city limits. It's a huge greenspace of miles and miles, with some of the land used for bike trails and a park type recreation. I live not more than 20 minutes away. It would be a perfect place to put one of those graphs to detect what is going on underneath Memphis. Anyway, just want to say thank you for your concern for our area, it's really appreciated!!! I will keep checking in here and see if you have any updates. And on a side note, its warmed up considerably here since yesterday but my outdoor cats are now wanting to come in which I'm finding kinda strange, my indoor cats are much more active today, the doggies are more active but still no birds. And also glad to report no snakes, frogs or sulfur so far. Will continue to keep an eye on things around here.

Well the severe weather is coming through and there is also a distinct smell in the air with it. Quite honestly I am not sure EXACTLY what sulfur smells like, but the smell outside is definitely unpleasant. Wanted to at mention that, but also that everyone's symptoms are improving. Hope everyone is safe!

reply to post by justsaying


Using my own (questionable) theory I'd say chances are pretty big an earthquake of considerable size (+7) is about to occure (+2/3 days) on the south-eastern side of the pacific plate.

I know, it's all very questionable and one should not take this information seriously. Just documenting it for future use.

Peace

PS: I also know that predicting an earthquake in this particular region of the world with a 7+ mag. isn't really amazing as they happen often over there, just entertaining my own delusion...

Thanks again to everyone who has posted replies and information. Forgive me for not writing specific responses, but rest assured I have read them all and taken note of what you have said. I especially appreciate the details about the locations of the two seismos. It's good to have confirmation that cultural noise is not likely to be a contributing factor to what they have been showing.

I suspect that some of the symptoms several of you have mentioned here could be related to the approaching bad weather that has now reached the region. The same could apply to the behaviour of some animals, but if they are fairly used to such weather then that would be less likely I suppose. Naturally, it's hard for us to be sure as they can't really tell us what upsets them, but as most of you know your own animals pretty well then you are the best judges of what is normal for them or not -- even allowing for stormy weather.

I've not stated the above to downplay our own feelings or concerns. In effect, I'm playing devil's advocate here -- against my own prediction. My own feeling is still that something is on the horizon and as I said I expect it shortly. However, as you'll know by checking back through this thread, sometimes I'm slightly off in these cases and on some occasions I'm completely wrong and nothing happens at all. So, while my own belief is still the same as I stated a couple of days ago, we can hope for the latter.

There's a couple of things I'd like to respond to more specifically and I'll get to those later today. Meantime, here's wishing that you all stay safe from those storms and especially the tornadoes.

Mike

reply to post by operation mindcrime

Hi Operation Mindcrime and thanks for posting your prediction. I assume the region you're looking at would be from around New Zealand, up through Vanuatu or thereabouts and around to PNG and Indonesia?

If so, then your prediction is actually pretty valid, because although this part of the Pacific Rim does get more mag 7s than many places, they are by no means common. Seeing as there are only about 18 or so mag 7-plus quakes in the entire world per year, and perhaps (ballpark figure) five or six of those might be in or near that region, we're really only looking at an average of one every couple of months or so there at the outside. If one occurs within the next week or so then that would be something to follow up on.

I'd be especially interested in your methodology if you'd care to elaborate. I appreciate that at this stage you may not wish to say much and that's okay, but it would be helpful if you could tell us a little. Also, if you could refine the area any better that would help, too. Perhaps a certain section of a fault zone, if possible? (Are we looking at a subduction zone event here, do you think?)

Best regards,

Mike

Hey Mike!!! Hope all is well with you and yours.

I just read this article...its all over the net and I am wondering what your thoughts are.

www.whatdoesitmean.com...

They have issued a "Mega Quake Warning for the US-Mexican Pacific Coast".

Thanks!!!!

Jenn