Quake Watch 2011

reply to post by Shenon


No, my apologies - I was getting off on one!

Yes I agree that the timing is not usual, but then again you could look at these as small swarms. After all 22,000 in Baja Cali was a swarm!!!!

I don't think Santa Cruz is anything to be concerned about particularly as it is probably reacting to the activity either side of it. There does not seem to be any close together quakes in the recent past however there was a triplet in October 2009, and a couple of pairs.

I have an open mind still on Spain. I think it remains to be seen if this continues, but I suspect not. There was a close coupled pair in Jan, and in December 2010, and again in Oct 2010 so the fact that we had a close coupled pair recently is not out of the norm for Spain.

Must be the plates reversing!!!

reply to post by PuterMan


Hey Puterman!

It just jumped out at me since there were three of decent size all in ten minutes....but now nothing since.

I have no real scientific basis for it, just 'appeared' to be a possible build-up. Things seem to be warming up a bit in that whole region!

reply to post by westcoast


Yes it certainly is busy down there. Maybe it is all an after effect of the Japan quake. After all that was a big movement so maybe the plate is wiggling it's bottom down there a bit as it settles back down again.

Must finish this quick. Vision on for a migrne just cane in and I can't dee the keyboatd properly.

Sorted. We are blessed with a profuse supply of feverfew here (wild daisy they call it). Taken neat it can get rid of the vision on in as quick as 90 seconds, but it is very bitter so I take it in a sandwich. Takes a little longer but no more than 5 to 8 minutes. The real benefit is no headache usually.

Erm.....there hasn't been any activity on USGS for almost 7 hours, is this normal?

Plus IRIS dont seem to have updated since yesterday? Or am i missing something here?

Any info on these quakes in Jamaica:

rjrnewsonline.com...
An earthquake was felt across the country just after 10:00 Monday morning.

RJR News has received calls from residents in several parishes with reports of more than one tremors within minutes of each other.

It is also understood that employees on the Office Centre Building on Ocean Boulevard and the neighbouring Digicel site in downtown Kingston were forced to evacuate.

However, there have been no reports of injury or damage.

This is the latest tremor in a series of earthquakes to rock the country

reply to post by shikori


M 4.8 - JAMAICA REGION - 2011-05-16 15:07 UTC

www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=221650

Magnitude M 4.8
Region JAMAICA REGION
Date time 2011-05-16 15:07:07.5 UTC
Location 17.94 N ; 77.86 W
Depth 20 km
Distances 96 km W Spanish town (pop 145,018 ; local time 10:07:07.5 2011-05-16)
26 km S Savanna la mar (pop 18,616 ; local time 10:07:07.5 2011-05-16)
10 km S Black river (pop 4,229 ; local time 10:07:07.5 2011-05-16)

earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2011kza2.php

Magnitude 4.7
Date-Time

* Monday, May 16, 2011 at 15:07:07 UTC
* Monday, May 16, 2011 at 10:07:07 AM at epicenter

Location 17.897°N, 77.895°W
Depth 31.6 km (19.6 miles)
Region JAMAICA REGION
Distances

* 15 km (10 miles) SSW (194°) from Black River, Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica
* 30 km (18 miles) S (169°) from Savanna la Mar, Westmoreland, Jamaica
* 32 km (20 miles) W (273°) from Bull Savanna, Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica
* 101 km (63 miles) W (264°) from Spanish Town, Saint Catherine, Jamaica
* 116 km (72 miles) W (266°) from KINGSTON, Jamaica

Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 7.8 km (4.8 miles); depth +/- 15.1 km (9.4 miles)
Parameters NST=102, Nph=102, Dmin=52.8 km, Rmss=1.29 sec, Gp= 47°,
M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=8
Source

* U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center:
World Data Center for Seismology, Denver

Event ID us2011kza2

More from Jamaica:
www.jamaicaobserver.com...

THE tremor which hit Jamaica about 10:13 this morning was felt for about 10 seconds in central and western Jamaica, according to initial reports received by the Observer.
Residents in western Jamaica, Manchester and St Ann reported the shock as "powerful".
"It was very powerful, I felt my chair move," a St Elizabeth resident said.


Read more: www.jamaicaobserver.com...

A minor earthquake was felt in several areas of Jamaica minutes after 10 this morning.
The ground shook for several seconds. There are no reports of damage as yet.

Members of the public have so far reported effects being felt in the parishes of Kingston & St Andrew, Clarendon, St Mary, St Catherine, St Elizabeth and St Ann.
We will update you further when more news is available.


Read more: www.jamaicaobserver.com...

reply to post by jjjtir


Quakes seem to be moving west along the transform plate boundary. The last one was a 4.8 last week in eastern Jamaica.

Jamaican seismographs at the UWI mona:

THE earthquake which was felt islandwide this morning at 10:07 measured 5.0 on the Richter Scale, reports the UWI Mona Earthquake Unit.
The unit reported that the epicentre was 20 kilometres offshore south of Black River in St Elizabeth.
With a focal depth of 21 km, the unit said that it had intensity reports from Negril, Montego Bay, Mandeville, Santa Cruz, Spanish Town and Kingston.


Read more: www.jamaicaobserver.com...

reply to post by shikori

This is the latest tremor in a series of earthquakes to rock the country

Odd, I can only find 2 quakes in the past 365 days. Is this right?

Date/Time UTC,Latitude,Longitude,Magnitude,Depth(Km),Location
2011-05-16 15:07:07, 17.896, -77.895, 4.7, 31.6, Jamaica Region
2011-05-06 09:29:24, 18.131, -76.589, 4.2, 20.3, Jamaica Region

The last one was a 4.8 last week in eastern Jamaica.

Where are you finding this?

EDIT:

Mona earthquake unit

About 200 earthquakes are located in and around Jamaica per year most of which are minor, having magnitudes less than 4.0. The most seismically active areas are the Blue Mountain block in eastern Jamaica and the Montpelier-Newmarket belt in western Jamaica. Other areas of notable seismicity include the near offshore south-west of Black River on the south coast, and offshore Buff Bay on the north–east coast.

I guess the site may be a little out of date:



Pass de ganja man, who need dis quakin'

If you go to this page ANSS catalog search

and use these parameters:

Your search parameters are:

* catalog=ANSS
* start_time=1900/01/01,00:00:00
* end_time=2011/05/16,17:52:13
* minimum_latitude=17.5
* maximum_latitude=19
* minimum_longitude=-78.5
* maximum_longitude=-76
* minimum_magnitude=0
* maximum_magnitude=10
* event_type=E

You will find that there are 78 earthquakes listed for Jamaica.from 1972 to the one before to day (not on that list yet)

Curiously the last one before that was 2008. Sort of ties in with the university list. Are we just not getting the info?

Since USGS have it as 4.6 ML someone else must be recording for the paper to get 5.0 ML

mb = 4.7 ( 72) ML = 4.6 ( 3) mblg = 3.9 ( 8) md = 0.0 ( 0) MS = 0.0 ( 0)

neic.usgs.gov...

Building collapse in central Arkansas
I'm really going out on a limb with this one,
but maybe this is related to the activity in Arkansas?

Flame away!

A few deep quakes in NZ Sunday night NZST.
Only 7 all up in 24hrs too, thats a bad sign, another moderate sized quake imminent

Magnitude, Reference, Latitude, Longitude, UTC Date (yyyy/mm/dd), UTC Time (hh:mm:ss), Depth, Location, Series/Faultline, Felt
4.022, 3512902, -38.90021, 174.96179, 2011/5/15 4:1:24, 227, S of Ohura, W of Tauramanui, Wanganui, No
3.665, 3513046, -36.78719, 177.42245, 2011/5/15 9:25:53, 199, o/s, Whakatane Seamount, N of Bay of Plenty, No
4.074, 3513051, -37.76618, 176.24695, 2011/5/15 9:36:14, 235, W of Te Puke, Bay of Plenty, No
3.712, 3513114, -38.60662, 176.28325, 2011/5/15 11:42:32, 89, Broadlands Forest, E of Wairakei, Waikato, No

Nothing much in for yesterday yet, 2 and a 3 in Chch and a 2 and a 3 in Wanganui Province

reply to post by PuterMan





I find it interesting that most of the quakes along that side of the Caribbean plate are concentrated in jamaica and that most of the quakes in jamaica 1997-2007 are located under the extinct Blue Mountains. There seems to be some form of convergence/divergence taking place ? Not sure what to make of the diagram.

Thanks for the pointer to Feverfew PuterMan, I did not know this one;

Really windy here, got the day off

I'm doing a cross section anaylisis of the European-Mediterranean region using EMSC data from March 15th to May 15th to see the shape of the Wadati-Benioff zone between the African and European Plates ( if there is one)
and while doing the Italian section Longitude 10E to 19E I zoomed into Sicily to see what is going on there.
There was a really deep Mag 2.8 quake 30/03/2011 3:25:56 p.m. UTC, 298km deep, that made me look twice.

Interesting that while Etna is belching, Stromboli (little island center top on the map) is dead quake wise.

The even pattern of the Mt. Etna quakes is likely due to there being only 2 decimal points in EMSC data (pretty poor really) I'd guess they were more randomly spaced than that.
Not many quakes though, considering it erupted


FWIW so far there appears to be no subduction zone from the Azores east to the island of Sardinia. More work to do yet though, its pretty complicated i can't match the graph North/South section to the map without tipping Europe over in its side
Heres a teaser example of what they look like, I'll put them all on one page when I'm done and post the link here.

reply to post by don rumsfeld


I hate to say it but I feel you are right. Yes they were renovating this building but a renovation is not a reason for it to collapse. I know the quakes here have done damage, they have damaged our home. I just think about a lot of historic buildings in this state and they are not up to earthquake standards. Such a horrible thing to have taken the life of a innocent child and injury to others.

reply to post by muzzy


So would it be fair to say that so far the theory is broken as I said?

On a different note some graphs for those who are interested.

These are 12 month rolling totals from December 2000 to May 2011 for each magnitude band 5 to 8+9 for counts and energy and a totals graph. The figures are not done yet as they are spread all over the place and linkd. I am gathering them together so they will be there soon.

This will be updated monthly so it is a moving picture of totals from 2000 onwards.

Looking at quarterly rolling as it will smooth the bumps a bit.

reply to post by PuterMan

Yep so far on that West side anyway. There were quakes from Algeria and Tunisia to put in so its not due to a lack of data.
To me it looks like the African Plate, if it includes Sicily is really thick, like 300km or more, you can see the shape of subduction here. The African Plate (including Sicily coming in from the left, subducting the >60km Euro Plate
Didn't someone reference here that the African Plate was thin at the North end?.


Just doing the Greece section now , what a mess

On your link;
Interesting how on the Mag 8-9 graph in the period 2006-2008 the energy is quite low compared to the count for the same period (when compared to say 2010 on its own) must be that Chile 8.8

reply to post by muzzy


Love your work Muzzy. I was wondering about these very things recently. Unfortunately I haven't had much time for tectonics lately. Look forward to your next addition.