Killer Tornadoes, Golf Ball Size Hail, and EarthQuakes Happening In...... Tennessee? Yes, Tennessee!

Nature is getting real crazy in EastTennessee lately, including an EarthQuake today, just hours before the giant Earthquake recorded in Sumatra.

This is a strange occurrence for us here and I can't help but wonder if there may be some correlation to the devastating quake reportedly occurring in Sumatra or other quakes across the globe the past hours of this week.

Seymour is located in East Tennessee, a community positioned in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. This area has long been regarded as a safe region, in general, from Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Earthquakes.

The area of East Tennessee has seen it's fair share of damaging tornadoes over the past decade, but what makes the Seymour area less susceptible to tornadoes is the proximity to the mountains and the protection they offer from storms of such magnitude.

In an area where the citizens are suprised to hear about an occasional tornado striking towns in neighboring counties, they have recently found themselves taking precautions to insure the safety of their friends and family from the destruction tornadoes can bring to their doorstep.

In the past weeks we have experienced tornadoes touching down and causing large amounts of damage like never before seen in Seymour. Aside from the recent tornadoes that have caused community members to rethink the safety they have enjoyed in the past, there have also been incredibly strong hail storms recently.

Hail storms are not so out of place for the region, until you take into account the scope of damage caused by the irregularly large hail stones that have been falling in recent storms. Home and automobile damage has found it's way to a large percentage of people, as have injuries resulting from hail stones striking unsuspecting and unprepared residents of the area.

What I am describing so far may not seem like much to you, especially if you have seen what really powerful tornadoes or other storm types can produce in destruction and bodily harm.

Oddly enough, with the recent increase in dangerous storms, there are not lots of talk going on about the storms or the potential for them to become more frequent and more powerful. The consensus remains that the recent bad weather was an aberration and there is no need for alarm, with most believing the weather patterns will return to normal and confidence in the general safety will be restored.

I have had a feeling that this is just a peek at what may be coming for the area and overall region in the SouthEast United States. The feelings became stronger when I logged ATS and found one of the headlining stories reporting on the recent giant Earthquake in Sumatra, originally reported to be an 8.9, it has since been re-evaluated and downgraded to an 8.7 magnitude. Still a massive Earthquake with potential to inflict unimaginable destruction.

I had been busy all morning and had not seen the Sumatra quake news yet. I decided to call my mom and ask if she had heard about it - since she likes to learn about the Earth's changes and what it does as a result, with the idea that many of the natural disasters inflicted by Mother Nature can be Earth's equivalent to a human immune system.

The call went a little like this:

"Hi Mom!, just calling to see if you heard about the Earthquake this morning?'

Her reply, "Yeah, I did. Can you believe that?They said it was a 2.2, glad it wasn't bigger. I don't think the buildings couldn't survive anything much bigger than that"

"Wow, well it has been upgraded to an 8.9 then. I can't believe they made such a mistake in reporting it's size. Apparently it was huge and probably caused a ton of destruction!" I said, thinking we were on completely different pages about the accurate stats of the Quake.

"I can't believe they aren't making a bigger deal about it! The town must be wrecked, why didn't we feel it!" she replied with confusion.

"Why would we feel it? It was on the other side of the planet! Maybe feel a tremor, surely not" I told her, not realizing we were talking about 2 separate quakes.

"What I understand is the earthquake was centered a few miles from your house & was a 2.2. What are you talking about?" She asked.

The light turned on as we realized we were talking about separate events.

The conversation made me aware of the local quake and made me question if any link could be found between the 2. I haven't found a direct link, other than the timing and rarity of the local quake.

USGS Stats:

SOURCE

Earthquake Details
This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

Magnitude

2.3

Date-Time

Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 04:39:12 UTC
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 12:39:12 AM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones


Location

35.797°N, 83.838°W

Depth

19.4 km (12.1 miles)

Region

EASTERN TENNESSEE

Distances

10 km (6 miles) E (85°) from Eagleton Village, TN
10 km (6 miles) ESE (116°) from Rockford, TN
10 km (6 miles) SW (215°) from Seymour, TN
22 km (14 miles) SSE (154°) from Knoxville, TN
232 km (144 miles) NNE (13°) from Atlanta, GA

Location Uncertainty

horizontal +/- 0.4 km (0.2 miles); depth +/- 0.8 km (0.5 miles)

Parameters

NST= 18, Nph= 24, Dmin=16 km, Rmss=0.14 sec, Gp= 86°,
M-type=duration magnitude (Md), Version=B

Source

Southeast U.S. Seismic Network

Event ID

se041112a

Here is a short news report telling early details of the local quake:

SOURCE

Earthquake rumbles Maryville night (Maryville is the town directly next to Seymour)


MARYVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- The ground rumbled early Wednesday morning and the U.S. Geological Survey called it 2.3 magnitude earthquake.

The earthquake hit a few miles northeast of Maryville close to the Pea Ridge Rd. and Temple Rd. intersection around 12:40 a.m. Wednesday, according to coordinates provided by the U.S. Geological Survey.

No damage was caused by the earthquake, but the rumble was felt for miles.

There have been similar quakes in the area over time, but I don't recall any activity that may correlate and precede a massive Earthquake by hours.

Several months ago I did a thread about the strange sound phenomena occurring in Seymour. It was a fun thread and taught me a little. One member's post told me about a possible relationship between the strange sounds and Earthquakes in the area.

Turns out that there was an Earthquake in the same general area as the one detailed above and that quake meshed closely with the time the sounds were heard.

There is also a major fault that runs through the western part of Tennessee, but that fault (New Madrid) is a couple hundred miles away.

This map, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, shows the United States' major earthquake hazard areas based on fault lines::



This image shows tornadic activity in and around the area relevant to this thread. Slightly misleading, since it doesn't include smaller tornadoes that have hit the area and are frightening to people not used to them.



Could these events foreshadow a series of massive natural disasters capable of stirking anywhere, regardless of historic records and scientific forecasts that say otherwise?

Here is a little more information I wanted to add about the region where this is taking place.

Found on the USGS site:

SOURCE

EARTHQUAKES IN THE EASTERN TENNESSEE SEISMIC ZONE

The Eastern Tennessee seismic zone extends across Tennessee and northwestern Georgia into northeastern Alabama. It is one of the most active earthquake areas in the Southeast. Although the zone is not known to have had a large earthquake, a few earthquakes in the zone have caused slight damage. The largest known (magnitude 4.6) occurred on April 29, 2003, near Fort Payne, Alabama. Earthquakes too small to cause damage are felt about once a year. Earthquakes too small to be felt are abundant in the seismic zone, and seismographs have recorded hundreds of them in recent decades.

Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).

FAULTS

Earthquakes everywhere occur on faults within bedrock, usually miles deep. Most of eastern Tennessee's bedrock originated several hundred million years ago, as the Appalachian Mountains were formed.

At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, often scientists can determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. The Eastern Tennessee seismic zone is far from the nearest plate boundaries, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea. The Eastern Tennessee seismic zone is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few, if any, earthquakes in the Eastern Tennessee seismic zone can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake. As in most other areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards in the seismic zone is the earthquakes themselves.

Edited to let those of you who plan on posting in this thread for discussion and questions, that I have to leave here for a while to finish up the rest of my daily chores. I'll be back in a few hours and will reply to all posts.

Don't want you guys to think I threw a thread up and then abandoned you all!

Thats funny that you say that, because MY mom lives near the one they just had in vincennes indiana around the same time.
Shes in the top end of the new madrid zone, in the wabash valley fault area.

I live in Western Kentucky and we have tornado warnings and hail quite often. I've only seen golf ball sized hail here once, and that was about 10 years ago. It beat my Dodge Neon to bits, and all I could do was stand there and watch. So, I haven't noticed any change in weather. I think people are looking for something that isn't there because of this 2012 hype.

ATS is a site full of paranoid people and failed predictions.

I live in Nashville, but have attended school in Knoxville for the past two years, and until the winter of 2010 had never seen hail in person before. Since moving to Knoxville, I've seen it three or four times now. I personally believe it's just such a change in environment in my case---Nashville's in sort of a valley, so most hail or snow never makes it to the ground, and Knoxville's in the mountains.

However, I do agree that the weather's been pretty crazy here recently! It was super hot in parts of March, and now we have a frost warning tonight!

Also, here's a video of the hail from two weeks ago! www.youtube.com...

reply to post by Hydroman


The difference found between where you and I live is the proximity to the mountains. You may have foothills and/or rolling hills, they are not the same as the Mountains that roll down from Mt LeConte. There is also the Chilhowee Mountain range that puts Seymour in a 'fish bowl' that has always deflected the majority of terrible weather, tornadoes, systems pushed in by hurricanes, etc.

Hail is not an uncommon occurrance, as I indicated before. The size of the hail and frequency of the hail storms most definitely is. It is no reach to try and find something to be paranoid about, it is simple observation based on experience and given facts.

The attitude of dismissal given in your post is similar to the attitude displayed while dismissing the increase of damaging natural events. Putting a blindfold on does not make it go away.

Also, as said above and previously, hail storms here are not that uncommon when it is seasonal for them.

I can not say that I remember experiencing or being told about any hail storms, having hail the size of golf balls or larger, occurring in the winter months. Seems they mostly occur in late spring, summer, and early fall when area temperatures seem to be much hotter with more humidity.

Sleet happens often in winter here, but never have seen hail in the winter... or temperatures like have been experienced of late. It seems as if we have almost completely skipped winter and gone straight from fall to spring, with a few days in between of weather that was cool, but remained unusually warm for the season.

No one, including myself, can make this up. It can be easily found that the weather has been much different than in previous years.

Hopefully you do not have to experience any of the terrible natural disasters that are happening around the globe and taking place in some areas where they were very rare occurrances before. If you are so unfortunate to experience one of these natural disasters, I do hope you and your loved ones remain safe.

I also hope that it doesn't require an experience like that for you and others to take off the blinders and start learning how weather and nature patterns are changing in the region where you live, as well as across the globe.

Truthfully, I may have kept a completely closed mind too and completely dismissed any possibility of nature change presented by another person, had I not experienced it first hand.

I do hope there are more open minded people out there who can help to determine how far beyond normal occurrances like this are and if there is any precedent for a series of unusual natural weather and geological events to base a comparison on.

reply to post by Evan_Dood


Where do you attend? UTK, Pellissippi St. etc?

Yes, Knoxville and Nashville do have their share of differences, but even in Knoxville there is a history of bad weather to an extent.

It is located in the Tennessee Valley and rarely experiences terrible weather on a large scale. Tornadoes are not completely unheard on in Knox County, TN, where the city of Knoxville is located. The further north, west, or north west you travel from Knoxville, the less protection is offered from the mountains.

On the other hand, the further south or southeast you travel from Knoxville, the more protection from bad weather could be expected, due to the relation of mountains in the area.

Seymour is located about 15 - 20 miles south of Knoxville, Maryville is a similar distance closer to the mountains, making both areas less prone to violent weather.

Not sure if you are attending in Knoxville currently, but if you are, or the next time you are here, take a look at the cars as you drive through town and listen to some of the sales adverts for local car dealers. If you haven't noticed already, you will be suprised at the number of vehicles that carry massive hail damage.

I bet it is 1 out of every 3 cars you will see with hail damage.

Aside from the tornado activity and the severe thunderstorms that have called this area home for a while now, the rise in earthquake earthquake activity in the area seems to have risen. If not more frequently, it seems to definitely be occurring with a greater magnitude per quake.

I do hope it is not a precursor of what may be coming to the Southern US or to the rest of the planet either.

reply to post by esteay812


I go to UTK, and yes, most of the cars I've seen here have some type of hail damage, and I think for Knox County that was just from one particularly bad storm we had in late 2010. The hail was a little big bigger than marbles, and came down incredibly hard. The earthquakes are another thing altogether! I've been going on usgs.gov for a few years now, and before about 8 months ago I had never noticed any showing up in or even near Tennessee. It could just be that I overlooked them, but based on that alone I believe we may be in for a largeish quake---in comparison to what we're used to---at some point in the near future.

Edit to add: I could probably go outside right now and count how many cars have hail damage, and it'd easily be in the double digits!

reply to post by esteay812

Like I said, it is nothing out of the norm to have hail storms where I live here in Western Kentucky, I've only seen golf ball sized hail one time. That was many years ago. Did I think that weather patterns had suddenly changed? Nope. Crap happens sometimes. Weather does strange things sometimes. It doesn't mean that something huge is on its way. Temperature records are broken, and some records had been held for decades...meaning that high temperatures existed long ago as well. So, just because you've got odd weather at the moment does not mean something is about to happen.

You have bought into the 2012 hype and you see what you want to see to justify your thinking.

Originally posted by Evan_Dood
Edit to add: I could probably go outside right now and count how many cars have hail damage, and it'd easily be in the double digits!

When my area got hit by golf ball sized hail 10 years ago, my car was totaled. It looked terrible. I was at a soccer tournament and there were many cars there that took as much damage as mine. We all sat inside a building and watched our cars take a beating. It was a nightmare lol. I got a check from my insurance company and kept the money and left the dents on my car.

There were many vehicles and properties damaged, it was a huge mess.

I work in a hydro power plant. We have seen record amounts of rain fall in certain areas and have set records as far as water discharge through our dam, as well as records in river levels. Did that make me think something terrible was on its way? Nope. Records have to be broken sometime. The old records were just that....old. Meaning that things had been bad before, many years before.

reply to post by Hydroman


When we had hail here two weeks ago, just as it started a ton of people including my roommates ran out and put towels on their cars. It was a pretty funny sight, and the hail ended up doing hardly any damage to anything.

And I know what you mean, I bet if the Nashville floods in early 2010 had instead happened in 2012, it would have gotten a LOT more national coverage. Some of my friends online in California/Washington D.C. had no idea we were having floods, and yet we were out of school for a week, had tons of people displaced, had to close our best mall until last month, etc. It was insane.

This is good to know, I have a ton of friends in that area who have been complaining about a LOT of hail lately.

I had no idea there was such a great EQ risk on the SC coast, where have I been? That's where I live, incredible. I'll have to look into that.

Incredibly informative post, OP, SF

reply to post by Hydroman


It's nice to see you are able to make an assumption about my logic and train of thought based off your own ideology of people questioning recent changes from normal standards.

Because I am questioning the difference in weather and geological activity in recent moths and years, I am without doubt doing it because of 2012! Great deduction and thank you so much for your generalization, it is very telling.

In fact, I have made no assumptions based on whether it is 1899, 1942, 1958, 1984, 1999, or 2012 or any other date you may have convinced yourself that masses of people are playing "chicken Little' with.

Fact is, I have taken life experiences as well as documented stats and formed an opinion with the information. That opinion is not to try and convince you or anyone else that they should buy a buldozer and build themselves a nuclear-proof doomsday bunker.

The opinion is presented on ATS for members to discuss and possibly find correlations to other events around the globe or even in the same general area.

Since you have not had the life experience of such events does not mean that it is not happening outside of your own world. It does not require any sort of skeptical debunking or conspiracy driven accusations to try and derail the thread or level unfounded accusations of fear mongering or similar nutter banter.

I am not asserting that this is happening where you live in Kentucky. For those who may not realize, Tennessee and Kentucky do neighboring each other geographically, however, each respective state has sigificant topographical differences.

Saying that this is not happening in Kentucky so it can not be happening in Tennessee is akin to saying that because you haven't seen a shark in Kentucky then no one could have seen one in Tennessee... so they must be lying to scare people out of swimming in the lakes.... and yes, you can see sharks in Tennessee.

reply to post by ValentineWiggin


The New Madrid Fault could easily pop out one of the most desvastating EarthQuakes ever seen in America and possible the world. I hope it never happens, at least until we are advanced enough to control the outcome of Earthquakes and that is surely a long time off.

I hope the weather stabilizes and Earth disasters beome less frequent and less powerful. There is no telling what area would be affected in an event that puts several major weather systems together and couples them with geological events.

I don't like to imagine what the aftermath of a 'Katrina' size storm hitting an area recently pummeled by a massive Earthquake would be like. It would be horrible, so I do hope that we can make ourselves and friends aware of the possibility that not everywhere is immune to terrible disasters, even if it has been a century or more since the area has fallen victim to anything similar.

reply to post by Evan_Dood


What year were the floods that messed up the Opry Mills Mall project? I can't remember right off, but do remember the problems caused and the massive loss of funds on the project.

Just across the street from the mall, we built a resort for Fairfield. A timeshare resort that is owned by Wyndham now I believe. Anyway, they were worried about a similar incident happening on the build site and took tons of precautions to be sure they were safe.

I may be wrong, but it almost seems I remember the Opry Mills mall to be flooded by poor construction procedure... but my memory is cloudy on it...

This is all normal, you just haven't been around long enough to experience it at other times. All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.

Uhm crap. Edgar cayces predictions seems to be right on schedule.

The prediction was that the New Madrid fault would give way and the Great Lakes would pour out through the Mississippi and into the Gulf.

He also predicted Socialism in America if you could imagine that. This worries me because I have loved ones around the fault.

reply to post by esteay812


Ok, I am sorry for assuming you were jumping on the 2012 hype. I've seen so many of those silly threads here, I figured you were doing one too. Again, I am sorry.