Scientists mystified as 20 earthquakes hit Oklahoma in one day

scattered about in the lore of our state are things like this:

digital.library.okstate.edu...

charming old newspaper clippings of the ravia gold rush and other " important" matters.

genforum.genealogy.com...,County:k::23606.html

EDIT: ok -i cannot get the link to embed correctly so if interested just google " Ravia gold oklahoma geneology newspaper clippings" and look for the appropriate links.



i went there and interviewed old timers in the senior centers, nursing homes and places like that to verify the clippings and visited the tishomingo historical society to get thier ravia pamphlet which verifies significant gold prospecting and mining activity from there all the way into the valley that is now occupied by lake texoma; actually all the way to ardmore and points south and north of there. this history is largely forgotten. but it happened.

Hey, I am from Oklahoma too, I live near Tulsa. I have done some research and believe I have found the source behind all natural disasters for the past few years.



Well, we were warned. What more can be said. If you want to here the savior talk about it fast forward to about 9:10. Praise him!!

reply to post by stormbringer1701

there is a supervocano caldera under the eastern side of the state. supposedly extinct. yah..but unlike normal volcanoes; super volcanoes remain stationary as the continental plates drift over them so the surface site migrates between eruptions. the hot spot might be under central oklahoma after these millions of years.

The continents haven't drifted, in point of fact, from their positions relative to the mantle in at least 600 million years:

However, evidence from seismic-velocity, heat-flow, and gravity studies has been building up for several decades, showing that ancient continental shields have very deep roots and that the low-velocity asthenosphere is very thin or absent beneath them (e.g., Jordan, 1975, 1978; MacDonald, 1963; Pollack and Chapman, 1977). Seismic tomography has merely reinforced the message that continental cratons, particularly those of Archean and Early Proterozoic age, are “welded” to the underlying mantle, and that the concept of thin (less than 250 km thick) lithospheric plates moving thousands of kilometers over a global asthenosphere is unrealistic.

Plate Tectonics: A Paradigm Under Threat
DAVID PRATT
Daal en Bergselaan 68, 2565 AG The Hague, The Netherlands [email protected]



Regards to Oklahoma earthquakes specifically:

At least 86 earthquakes occurred during or shortly after hydraulic-fracturing operations of the Picket Unit B Well 4–18 in south-central Oklahoma. Cross-correlation identification of events identified that no similar earthquake waveforms occurred prior to or after hydraulic fracturing. The sequence had 16 earthquakes of ML 2.0 or greater. The first earthquake occurred ∼24 hrs after the onset of hydraulic fracturing. The vast majority of earthquakes, or 93%, oc- curred during or shortly after the second hydraulic-fracturing stage, which suggests that most of the stored stress in the shallow section of the fault was released at that time. Adding strength to the time correlation between earthquakes and hydraulic fracturing is a unique circumstance generated by poor weather conditions, which caused the second and third hydraulic-fracturing stages to be separated by more than two days, and led to multiple temporal correlations between hydraulic fracturing and earthquake occurrence. While the precise location of the earthquakes may have some uncer- tainty, they evidently occurred in close proximity to the Picket Unit B Well 4–18. The largest earthquake to occur in this sequence was an ML 2.9. While cases of hydraulic fracturing triggering earthquakes of this size have not been previously identified, instances triggering or fault activation associated with hydraulic fracturing have been previously observed (Maxwell et al., 2009; Warpinski, 2009; de Pater and Baisch, 2011). It is likely that hydraulic fracturing triggered the earthquakes observed in this study, considering the strong temporal and spatial correlations between them.

Earthquakes Triggered by Hydraulic Fracturing in South-Central Oklahoma
by Austin A. Holland

Published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Vol. 103, No. 3, pp. 1784–1792, June 2013, doi: 10.1785/0120120109

So, some fairly recent science showing what they know to be the case.

jadedANDcynical
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

The continents haven't drifted, in point of fact, from their positions relative to the mantle in at least 600 million years:

edit on 20-2-2014 by jadedANDcynical because: Fixed tag

i don't think that's right. if you look at the geological record of yellow stone caldera eruptions you'll see that the last three roughly 300,000 years apart show that the caldera of each has (in apparent motion) drifted westward towards the coast. in reality we know that due to the nature of the pacific /North American plate interactions it is the land that is moving and that it is not the hot spot that is causing the super volcano that is moving.

furthermore the african rift with it's attendant vulcanism is due to two kraytons moving at different speeds.

kraytons do move. it's not even a controversial subject in the geological field.

not only do kraytons drift they also erode and dissolve. they are basalt but even basalt eventually melts and even basalt eventually erodes.

reply to post by stormbringer1701


Are you aware that the mantle does not appear to be a homogenous melt with 'plumes' of molten material, but is rather a fractured assembly of many disparate densities; from the first paper I linked in my prior post:

Geophysical data show that, far from the asthenosphere being a continuous layer, there are disconnected lenses (asthenolenses), which are observed only in regions of tectonic activation and high heat flow. Although surface-wave observations suggested that the asthenosphere was universally present be- neath the oceans, detailed seismic studies show that here, too, there are only asthenospheric lenses. Seismic research has revealed complicated zoning and inhomogeneity in the upper mantle and the alternation of layers with higher and lower velocities and layers of different quality. Individual low-velocity layers are bedded at different depths in different regions and do not compose a single layer. This renders the very concept of the lithosphere ambiguous, at least that of its base. Indeed, the definition of the lithosphere and asthenosphere has become increasingly blurred with time (Pavlenkova, 1990, 1995, 1996).

weirdguy
Perhaps there is a new bunker system being built in secret.

Exactly what i was thinking.

I read somewhere about engineers had proposed using mini-nukes to carve out underground chambers that would be very strong, having curved / arched roof surfaces and walls of fused and melted rock.

Not sure how they'd get around the radiation problem they'd create though, unless they planned to line it with feet thick lead or something...anyone noted a shortage of lead supply in the area?

Glinda
Fascinating (and scary!) thread on the EQ swarm in Oklahoma. Up thread someone mentioned a fairly recent (within the last several years) EQ in Youngstown, OH. This passed summer I started an ATS thread on the LOWERING ceiling of a salt dome OFF the Cleveland, OH Lake Erie shoreline. During my reading (albeit minor research on Ohio geology) I learned that the Youngstown area has been noted for seismic activity since it's earliest settlement...and that (if memory serves me) had a major EQ in 1910.

FWIW, the oil/natural gas industry HAS been drilling/fracking in OH for many many years (starting at about the time Oil was discovered in Oil City, PA--not that far away as the crow flies). One of the best Petroleum/Natural Gas Engineering schools in the US is in a small town in OH (Marietta College).

PLEASE note, I am NOT trying to hijack thread in any way...I just wanted to give my background info I learned about Youngstown OH (as it was previously mentioned)

Prayers and good thoughts to Oklahoma and Louisiana (the ongoing sinkhole) residents who are having to deal with these awful situations.

I was reading up on the geology of these areas, and it seems that the shale rock (which is being fracked apart) sits on top of limestone layers (which can dissolve and form underground rivers, caves). It seems to me that if you weaken those shale rock layers, that is going to cause cave-ins, sink-holes, and whatever else.

reply to post by snarky412


There is an area southwest of Dallas that is experiencing similar earthquake swarms. Residents are pointing their fingers at fracking, but again, there is no solid proof. They are all small and not causing any damage or injuries.

On the lighter side:

So...will SyFy make a movie called SharkquakeNado? Landsharks have been known to cause small earthquakes.....

stormbringer1701

jadedANDcynical
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

The continents haven't drifted, in point of fact, from their positions relative to the mantle in at least 600 million years:

edit on 20-2-2014 by jadedANDcynical because: Fixed tag

i don't think that's right. if you look at the geological record of yellow stone caldera eruptions you'll see that the last three roughly 300,000 years apart show that the caldera of each has (in apparent motion) drifted westward towards the coast. in reality we know that due to the nature of the pacific /North American plate interactions it is the land that is moving and that it is not the hot spot that is causing the super volcano that is moving.

furthermore the african rift with it's attendant vulcanism is due to two kraytons moving at different speeds.

kraytons do move. it's not even a controversial subject in the geological field.

not only do kraytons drift they also erode and dissolve. they are basalt but even basalt eventually melts and even basalt eventually erodes.

edit on 20-2-2014 by stormbringer1701 because: (no reason given)

edit on 20-2-2014 by stormbringer1701 because: (no reason given)

I would like to reply to this mini thread: In fact the tectonic plates (in a sense, continents, yet not accurate) have drifted and continue to drift at a steady rate. Currently the Atlantic Ocean is expanding pushing the North American plate westward. Where the NA plate intersects the Pacific plate is part of the "rim of fire" and is the cause of a number of effects. Earthquakes along the west coast, the Rocky and Cascade mountains, vulcanism etc.

Stormbringer: When you say: Krayton...what exactly do you mean? Are you referring to the craton, specifically the North American craton? The whole central part of the North American continent is a craton.

I would also like to toss in, generally speaking, that you cannot automatically make a connection between quake swarms and fracking. There may be something else going on, or it may be fracking. To make the connection automatically, as seems to be happening, is like your power in your home going off just as a garbage truck drives by and then claiming it was the trucks fault your lights went off.

Stormbringer, are you saying that there are economically significant sources of gold, diamonds etc in Oklahoma or just a smattering?

reply to post by Bundy


Greetings fellow Okie. I can't seem to get your link to work. I assume it's a video of some sort but all I see is a
large white empty square in the middle of your post. Could you provide a link to the video? TIA.

bbracken677

Stormbringer: When you say: Krayton...what exactly do you mean? Are you referring to the craton, specifically the North American craton? The whole central part of the North American continent is a craton.



Stormbringer, are you saying that there are economically significant sources of gold, diamonds etc in Oklahoma or just a smattering?

edit on 20-2-2014 by bbracken677 because: (no reason given)

edit on 20-2-2014 by bbracken677 because: (no reason given)

Krayton or crayton evidently. some are huge(r) than others.

the hard rock gold lodes that remain in oklahoma tend to be small 1/4 inch wide ribbons about three to 10 foot tall that peter out after a relatively small distance. but there are a lot of them. the rushes we had were all by tunnel miners or placer miners. and they did not have the advantage of magnetometers, GPRs metal detectors and so forth so what would happen is a prospector would discover on of these sheets send it off to be assayed and then get a ridiculously outrageously huge result back. then they would tunnel a while following a vein and it would disappear entirely. they had no way to know which way to go and how far or even if there was another little vein. but now you could more easily detect the next vein. it was not economically feasible (for a company) back then and there was rarely anyone who considered pit mining. but economically feasible is in the eye of the beholder. if a single man or a few men found one of those vein-lets they would be well off.

you have several types of gold in oklahoma though.

lodes of mini veins. the eroded gold in the drainages of the ancient mountain range. some of this can be found just about everywhere. if you are a good prospector you can even find places where it has concentrated to useful levels. we are down hill from the moe northern states and the glaciers from the last iceage ground up northern gold and some of that subsequently washed down into oklahoma and into our drainages as well. the glacial moraines were just about even with ft leavenworth kansas.

fossilized drainages and river beds at varying depth but usually 100 meters deep were the actual alluvial fans of the old mountains and these contained not only gold by gems of various sorts. not diamonds but i'll get to diamonds later. i have some contacts that are old oil men and friend with the same sorts of contacts say that the tailings often contain nuggets and gems. dunno how true but because i know of the old mountain range it very well could be true.

also there are several interstate rivers that bring gold from texas, colorado new mexico and wyoming. the red river, the cimmaron river, the colorado, illinois and arkansas have gold. in the case of the cimmaron i ran across an archived paper article about deaths incurred by youths trestle diving for gold nuggets getting tangled in submerged flood debris.but i cannot find the article due to google pollution. most gold in those rivers is powder gold or rare flakes at best.

as for the diamonds it is folklore. i kind of believe it for two reasons though. fisrt its' no too far from crater of diamonds in arkansas. there are several kimberlite pipes in that area. and that whole park is a public diamond mine and lots of diamonds are found there. at the time i first heard of the diamond finds somewhere in between durant and antlers i did not have much faith in it. but i got to thinking about arkansas and it's diamonds. years afterwards i read about that darned super volcano caldera which overlapped into oklahoma. that lends it more credibility too. also i eventually learned that there were more than one kimberlite pipe in arkansasand not just the one in the park there.

unrelated to the possibility of a okllahoma kimberlite pipe and native diamonds; the wyoming and colorado flood gold thing means stuff from wyoming and colorado does make it here. and both of those places have diamonds. canada owns most of the diamond mining rights there though. it is possible that diamonds from those states occasionally make it into oklahoma just like the gold does.

more lore the spaniards dug all over the place here. so did the french. and the indians. the spaniards had a yearly mule train of gold they took from devil's canyon near quartz mountain park in western oklahoma and took it down to ports in louisiana. it's part of our lore. they got masaquered (twice) before giving up that mine.

a huge gold nugget was found on the slopes of mount scott now on the ft sill military reservation.

Ft Sill was created to keep people like Meers from starting war with the indians by trespassing on their alloted land and mining. a lot of work went into sinking over 2400 shafts in that area.

gold in oklahoma is mostly of two types; elemental gold. mostly of 22. something carats. and bound in ores like sylvanite as was the case in ravia ( a telluride mineral) though we also have copper lead and zinc mines and all of these mines usually also are gold mines by default. meaning part of what they bring out has at least a small percentage of gold in it.

since a pinch of gold is about 100 bucks now i'd say any of it is economically significant to me

i found 64 particles of gold in about a third of a 5 gallon bucket full of selected gravels from a certain place on the blue river. generally anything over 11 particles in a single pan is considered worthwhile by even Alaskan miners provided your operation is mechanized. i just went to the first two gravel drops outs i found in a dried flood channel as well as using a sucker pump (called a hand dredge) in a few crevasses in riverbed bedrock. i didn't even look all that hard or long.

also check it out... would you build a cyanide gold ore processing mill if you din't have any gold in your gold mine?

www.ghosttowns.com...

wildman oklahoma is a gold mining ghost town. one of several in that area. there is another one around a mine called the golden bell or lucky bell or something like that. they built a cyanide mill. a tramway and a train track too. you don't do that if your hole in the ground is a fraud. but the official story is that the bell mine was a fraud. unlikely if you ask me. you don't build a mill and stuff then go into your mine and pack a shot gun with gold from somewhere else and shoot it into the walls to pull off a scam.

you don't freight off 6 box cars full of mined ore for assaying get a good assay back if there is no commercially viable gold there as happened in the witchitas gold rush. the reports are in archived newspapers from galveston to chicago to the ny times. b

reply to post by stormbringer1701


Interesting! I was unaware of all that. I had no idea there had been gold rushes in Oklahoma.

I appreciate the info including the lore.

bbracken677
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Interesting! I was unaware of all that. I had no idea there had been gold rushes in Oklahoma.

I appreciate the info including the lore.

You are welcome and there are tons more there are spanish mines on pendleton creek in tishamingo, a gold mine of some sort in bugaboo canyon near atoka and several on the kiamichi rivver. kiamichi is not an indian word as most people think but it is a corrupted french word as it was the french that named that river and they had silver mines up the river. there is some gold in that river as well but not much and its hard to get to. you have to remove the overburden and get down to a false bedrock or bedrock layer. personally the kiamichi river is too much trouble for too little gold. unless you find the old river bed; the present one has little gold and nothing bigger than bird shot in size and that only if you have a dredge and like being wet and like fighting snakes. there were three indian gold mines within 50 miles of the old mccurtain county county seat. there is a vertical shaft gold mine near talogah that is inexplicable. there is no real reason for there to be gold there yet oklahoma treasure books say that nuggets (rare in oklahoma) are reported in the drainage that the mine is next to the head of. I have actually talked to the current caretaker of that land and he confirms the mine but was unaware of the type of mine it was. i even got tentative commitments to get access to the drainage there. reports of nuggets in oklahoma are rare but otter creek (on an indian reservation) near lake tom steed, talogah, mount scott, the cimmaron river, and lake texoma are places where gold nuggets have been reported either in newspapers, prospector websites, magazines or oklahoma treasure lore books or in the case of texoma by word of mouth. all virtually other hard rock lode locations are in a straight line from west to east from devils canyon to ft sill to ardmore to tishamingo to ravia to the kiamichi river to the arkansas gold and silver spill over in the oitchita mountian range.

like i said before; most oklahoma gold is powder or microscopic gold and it is widely dispersed for the most part but there are places where that is not the case. as water moves the gold there are places where it is stopped and over time the gold is concentrated again. you would not get rich on the scattered gold but if you are good you could find a concentrated deposit or one of those mini-veins. but you can get a vial with enough oklahoma gold in it to prove you did it just about anywhere in the state.

the calculus of whether gold is economical or not depends on partly assay values but it can also be that something that was uneconomical like the ravia rush turned out to be or not depends on technology too. ravia was tunnel mined. the veins played out to rapidly and locating a new one was not feasible with tunnel mining. but if you pit mined it... well the veins were syvanite. with 65 percent gold and the rest being platinum, tellurite and a few metallic traces of more common metals. some vienlets were elemental gold of purity rivaling dalonegah georgia gold. and a vienlet in 1908 might send a company like ballard and smith bankrupt but a vienlet today would make you a millionaire many times over. i bet that if the witchita shafts were opened today they would be economically feasible. there is a huge difference between 30 dollars an ounce and 1700 dollars an ounce. and the devils creek one? if that is true and they sent pack trains of gold to spanish ships in louisiana then that would rival any gold mine in california or the presidio texas.

during the depression people here and in other lesser known gold states would go out and pan enough to get them by in tough times. even louisianna had gold bearing streams some of them assayed crazy good and others were just like oklahoma where you work your butt off to get a pinch.

some links for you

query.nytimes.com...

query.nytimes.com...

4 more earthquakes in guthrie OK. 2.8 to 3.3 magnitude

reply to post by stormbringer1701

Since then, we've had these, per OGS (UTC time, -6 hrs is local):
014-02-23 09:15:41.106000 36.036 +/- 1.3 -97.341 +/- 2.2 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.7 ML OGS
2014-02-23 07:23:32.737999 36.035 +/- 1.1 -97.336 +/- 1.9 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.0 ML OGS
2014-02-23 07:10:51.786000 36.467 +/- 2.4 -97.055 +/- 3.0 5.0 +/- 0.0 2.7 ML OGS
2014-02-23 04:44:35.755000 36.175 +/- 1.5 -96.981 +/- 2.1 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.2 ML OGS
2014-02-23 04:02:49.329999 36.034 +/- 1.1 -97.340 +/- 1.8 5.0 +/- 0.0 2.6 ML OGS
2014-02-23 03:11:38.829000 36.103 +/- 1.3 -97.081 +/- 1.9 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.0 ML OGS
2014-02-23 02:20:03.153000 36.642 +/- 4.9 -98.412 +/- 3.2 11.1 +/- 5.9 2.2 ML OGS

We've had less quakes over the past couple of days than we had been having since activity rose last week and they're a bit further off from me, but I'm a little concerned. While they aren't large by earthquake standards, the strength of these quakes seems to be getting stronger.

Historically, we were said to have had a 6-7 quake back in the late 1800s - where, I know not, just reported by Indian Forts somewhere in Oklahoma Territory. I fear what would happen if something like that struck in modern times. I don't think our buildings are anywhere near capable of withstanding such tremors, save maybe a few of the newer skyscrapers.

reply to post by stormbringer1701


I was out that way yesterday (in Coyle) and didn't feel a thing. May have been masked by all the drilling that's being done out that way, though.

Greven
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Since then, we've had these, per OGS (UTC time, -6 hrs is local):
014-02-23 09:15:41.106000 36.036 +/- 1.3 -97.341 +/- 2.2 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.7 ML OGS
2014-02-23 07:23:32.737999 36.035 +/- 1.1 -97.336 +/- 1.9 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.0 ML OGS
2014-02-23 07:10:51.786000 36.467 +/- 2.4 -97.055 +/- 3.0 5.0 +/- 0.0 2.7 ML OGS
2014-02-23 04:44:35.755000 36.175 +/- 1.5 -96.981 +/- 2.1 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.2 ML OGS
2014-02-23 04:02:49.329999 36.034 +/- 1.1 -97.340 +/- 1.8 5.0 +/- 0.0 2.6 ML OGS
2014-02-23 03:11:38.829000 36.103 +/- 1.3 -97.081 +/- 1.9 5.0 +/- 0.0 3.0 ML OGS
2014-02-23 02:20:03.153000 36.642 +/- 4.9 -98.412 +/- 3.2 11.1 +/- 5.9 2.2 ML OGS

We've had less quakes over the past couple of days than we had been having since activity rose last week and they're a bit further off from me, but I'm a little concerned. While they aren't large by earthquake standards, the strength of these quakes seems to be getting stronger.

Historically, we were said to have had a 6-7 quake back in the late 1800s - where, I know not, just reported by Indian Forts somewhere in Oklahoma Territory. I fear what would happen if something like that struck in modern times. I don't think our buildings are anywhere near capable of withstanding such tremors, save maybe a few of the newer skyscrapers.

edit on 23-2-2014 by Greven because: (no reason given)

i would not be so sure...newer oklahoma homes and building are built to resist tornadoes due to changes to the Building Code. so they have metal strips and hangers tying joists, stud walls and rafters down or together. and cinder or masonry brick walls also have metal fixtures tying them together to underlying stud walls too. it seems to me that should add some resistance to earthquakes as well. it is the older shacks that might not have that reinforcement that would likely go poof in a moderate earthquake. a moderate earthquake might damage a building or home but would be unlikely to make it totally collapse. there would be fewer casualties. but the economic price of restoring damaged buildings would still be very severe.

reply to post by stormbringer1701


If you haven't you should do a thread on this info. If you have, a link would be great. I noticed that you referenced Tom Steed. I was born and raised in OK and our family farm was taken to create Tom Steed. They put the ranger station where the farmhouse was. Spent many a weekend on that farm.

Still have family there and some of them have posted about the booms being heard around Altus.