Earthquake Swarm in Arkansas Intensifies. Memphis, Tennessee could be epicenter for the next big one

reply to post by Robin Marks


Yea i would say it resembles volcanic quakes, but im no expert. I just happend to be in middle school during mt st helans. so it sorta peaked my intrest from way back then. I tend to try and think to much but oh well lol. and it just seems that when there is movment on the pacific plate it acts like a jello pond there. Im thinking they filled the sponge and now its time for the sponge to shake itself off. Im not saying there is a volcano under there. but it sure behaves like a liquid.
im on one of the biggest powder kegs in the world lol mt baker and rainier are close. cascade range is about 3 feet out my door.
The popping stoped havent had one in 5 min. it sounded like popcorn for a while. this place was built in 1907 and is a log cabin ive never had much settling going on. but just my hyper awairness now lol.

Robin and Puterman. Please excuse me if I am wrong. But how come you don't seem to use the 6 helicorders at the Arkansas Seismic Network ? Are they not as good?

Anyways, thanx for all your interesting info. I have been keeping up with this thread the entire time. Since I feel something bigger than most are anticipating will occur. I just would hate to see anything bad happen to my fellow americans. Who knows, maybe this thread will give some an earlier warning. Or maybe even contributre to the end of fracking. Fingers crossed!

Oh and to all that are concerned with the location of previous volcanos... Personally, I feel the entire planet is one big volcano waiting to happen. Think about it... What is way deep below everyones feet? I am not an earth scientist, but fracking is new. Especially around a fault line.

We just had a 3.2 again

reply to post by Fritzthecat


Hi there neighbor! You can go:

HERE

AND HERE

To take a look at and near Baker. Trouble is, the siesmo right at Baker isn't worth crap to look at.

You should really take a look at my thread linked in my sig line for 'what's really happening in Washington State'. Some recent talk about 'feelings' for something brewing here.


Edit to add: Oh, and I just gotta say, that I have commented a couple of times now (oh...hundreds of posts back ) that I too think these traces resemble some things we have seen at Yellowstone, and that I have seen at helens. Not that I know what it means, but an observation for what it's worth.


EDIT: another quake (0129 PST) rolling through. Close to 2.5

Well, you guys were asking about GEE, and I did watch two stations about 50 and 80 miles away yesterday for quite a while in GEE. Unfortunately, GEE's network servers are crap like they always have been, with constant problems. The latest problem is GEE won't load the network list, giving a "GEE servers are unavailable" message- so I can't get any closer to the action and have to use only the networks and stations that load by default. Then again, I'm not sure if there are any closer stations, cause I can't load the network list.

But from what I did see, the quakes differred in signature from what I remember seeing at Yellowstone during the swarms. YS's usually had real sharp attacks, while these had rounder, more blunt type decays, and were much less frequent. It would be interesting to know the signatures of water/gas intrusion vs magma intrusion vs faulting. But from what I can tell so far, there do appear to be major differences in the signatures.

reply to post by SusanFrey


In Los Angeles, we used to hang a glass pendant on a chain or rope on a nail on the wall in every room. We called them earthquake chains. When there was an earthquake, they would hit the wall, and it worked most of the time. This is probably very primitive, but also easy to do, and it is a simple warning system.

I was never in any of the big quakes, but I did get to feel some shaking. Hope all is well, and stay safe.

Luckily, you can still see the smaller quakes even though they changed the webicorders settings.

And there's lots of quakes. Lots. Seems again like it's building and not subsiding.

oops, wrong thread.

After several shakes that woke us up through the night things seem to have settled down for the moment. Something that has me really upset is I watched on the news last night that the gas company is lobbying to drill directly into Greer's Ferry lake. This is a beautiful pristine lake that we locals love and brings in much tourism. They've already drilled around the lake and if you pull up the map of well sites you can see that they have literally drilled thousands of wells around here with much more land leased for future drilling. With all the places they have to drill it really upsets me they want to put rigs in the lake. These gas companies have no end to their greed! The news also said BHP Billington plans to "Triple" production in this area! My wife and I are now talking of moving from this area we love. Not necessarily because of the earth quakes but because of the waste land all these wells are creating. If you haven't look at the Arkansas well site map please do so. It really puts into perspective the magnitude of what they are doing to us and our state. www.geology.ar.gov_pdf/Fossifuels/Fay%20cen%20map%2042x72.pdf Ps: I applogize....I'm really having a hard posting a direct link.

I see that they will be getting storms and more rain for the polluted water table in Arkansas today.

I have a question.
What are the chances that waste injection could cause large voids in the areas where they are pumping the water into the ground? Millions of gallons of chemically treated water going into a hole in the rock under high pressure may start carving out channels in the shale bed, especially if there are impervious rock layers above and below it.
Could some of the smaller quakes be caused by voids in the bed collapsing?

reply to post by NTS1960


"Something that has me really upset is I watched on the news last night that the gas company is lobbying to drill directly into Greer's Ferry lake. This is a beautiful pristine lake that we locals love and brings in much tourism."

Hopefully, the Army Corps of Engineers will say HELL NO to this. They limit the number of docks on the water to keep it "natural" - surely they won't let drilling wells dot the beautiful lake.

reply to post by KathyG427


I have to believe your right Kathy about the COE saying hell no to drilling in the lake.....but then I didn't think they would drill on our WMA lands either. I would be shocked if they were allowed to drill in GF lake but the idea they would even suggest such a thing really has me upset. Their greed knows no bounds, which I already knew, but it seems they have to keep proving it over and over.

More Earthquake Monitors for Central Arkansas

The U. S. Geological Survey has provided more seismic monitors in the Greenbrier area after a series of small earthquakes in north-central Arkansas.

A spokesman for the Arkansas Geological Survey says more monitors are on the way and will be put in place before the weekend.

In the last 24 hours, the area has been shaken by two earthquakes measuring 3.0 and above in magnitude, as well as a few smaller quakes.

Here's the list of latest tremors in the area as of 7:45 this morning:

2.8 2011/02/24 06:18:49 35.295N 92.350W 4.1 4 km ( 2 mi) SSW of Guy, AR
2.7 2011/02/24 03:12:16 35.285N 92.347W 4.6 5 km ( 3 mi) SSW of Guy, AR
3.2 2011/02/24 01:35:24 35.340N 92.315W 4.7 2 km ( 1 mi) NE of Guy, AR
2.9 2011/02/23 22:43:16 35.269N 92.358W 5.0 5 km ( 3 mi) NE of Greenbrier, AR
2.8 2011/02/23 22:03:03 35.252N 92.387W 5.1 2 km ( 1 mi) N of Greenbrier, AR
2.6 2011/02/23 18:29:03 35.275N 92.332W 5.2 6 km ( 3 mi) S of Guy, AR
3.4 2011/02/23 18:24:45 35.287N 92.356W 3.9 5 km ( 3 mi) SSW of Guy, AR

In regards to fluid flow dynamics in underground reservoirs, I find the following:

With supporting geochemical evidence, they showed that oil produced from reservoirs in central Illinois could have been generated from the New Albany Shale in the deep basin, and then migrated from south to north for over 100 km.

From this .pdf that seems to corroborate Robin's ideas about deep geologic fluid flows.

Also stated earlier in the same document is this:

The New Madrid Seismic Zone, which spans southwestern Kentucky, southeastern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, and northwestern Tennessee, is the most seismically active area in North America east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1811-1812, this zone was the source area of three earthquakes of moment magnitude M > 8 , among the largest known intraplate earthquakes (Braile and others, 1982, 1 9 8 6 ) . Reactivation of preexisting faults under a contemporary maximum horizontal principal stress direction trending east-northeast was suggested by Braile and others ( 1 9 8 2 ) .

Could someone with a bit more geologic learning tell us what this is saying?

Maybe we ought to find the study referenced (Braile and others, 1982,1986)

I know the above referenced .pdf refers to Production in KY, but I think it still has implications in the AR quakes.

Further on this can be found:

INDUCED SEISMICITY Various types of human activity can induce seismicity, a phenomenon which has been recognized since an increase of local earthquakes was noted in 1945 to accompany the filling of Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border (Scholz, 1990). Seismicity may either be an immediate response to the increased subsurface stress resulting from surface reservoir loading, or may be delayed for some years until the regional pore pressure is able to readjust to a higher value. Earthquakes may also result from mining activity (McGarr, 1994) or from subsurface waste disposal (Nicholson and Wesson, 1992). In oilfield operations, earthquakes may be induced by water injection for secondary recovery, well stimulation by hydraulic fracturing, or as a consequence of primary oil and gas production (Doser and others, 1992; Grasso, 1992).

So there is a *LOT* of study evidence for induced seismicity and anyone who thinks otherwise is very sadly misinformed (or is that disinformed?) in any case, I thought I would share this and see if anyone thinks it has any bearing on the current discussion.

Well looks like going to have my own problems here, just never ends same ole ,Gov't Official saying once again ,, where's the proof,, the idiocy just seems to be world wide at the moment.

www.capebretonpost.com...

Yes this now in my backyard ,, so sad,,

Ohh the words from the official Oil Company Exec. and i quote "“We (in industry) think it takes a four-year university degree and 20 years of experience to figure it out, and now we are dealing with people who think they can figure it out after 10 minutes on the Internet,” he said." unquote

See what were ALL up against .

This webicorder now has no data

www.iris.washington.edu...


Anyone else having that problem?

Originally posted by herenow
This webicorder now has no data

www.iris.washington.edu...


Anyone else having that problem?

I'm seeing the same thing.......

Latest quake via folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu...
2.5 2011/02/24 11:28:13 35.262N 92.347W 4.5 5 km ( 3 mi) NE of Greenbrier, AR
time listed is CST


The Woody Hollow State Park one is working at this link:
folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu...



EDIT TO ADD:: Looks like this is the reason:

Planned IRIS DMC Database maintenance Thursday Morning, Feb 24, 2011 at 10AM PST 02/23/2011

www.iris.washington.edu...

reply to post by OneisOne


Thanks!

Now I can watch the sqigglies again.

Could a major earthquake happen anywhere in east TN, like nearby the smoky mtns national park? I NEED TO KNOW ASAP PM ME IF YOU CAN, A LOT OF PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW IF IT IS POSSIBLE!

reply to post by herenow


Yes not getting anything