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One of the unnamed Sea Mountains on the Juan De Fuca plate experinced a whooping 5.1 earthquake about an hour ago ~ 10:48 am PDT.
Location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sour...938599&t=h&z=8
Although this is close to the Blanco fracture zone, it's an unkown at this point if it is Tectonic or Volcanic.
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Ah. No wonder I didn't feel it--for the curious, it's out west of Coos Bay, Oregon, a couple hundred miles offshore.
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Gillian
"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"
"You can't erase icing."
"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"
Order of Kilopi
well, the Mayan calendar ends in 2 and a half years...
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No Tsunami warnings have been issued, although informational statement was released by NOAA.
A Magnitude 3.1 and 3.9 earth quake just /now/ occured in the same region.
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The 3.1 was Upgraded to 3.8 Mag.
There was another 3.9 and 4.3 earth quake in same region. These are too strong to be normal aftershocks. Still unknown if Volcanic or Techtonic. Depth of events have decreased from 28km to 10km.
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Another Quake Mag 4.4 in same region, back to 28km+ depth.
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Latest Log, with updates to depths and Magnitudes.
MAG UTC DATE-TIME y/m/d h:m:s LAT deg LON deg DEPTH km Region
MAP 4.4 2010/05/07 20:02:19 44.496 -129.418 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 3.9 2010/05/07 19:15:59 44.527 -130.659 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.3 2010/05/07 19:03:31 44.536 -129.557 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.4 2010/05/07 18:55:04 44.508 -130.052 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.2 2010/05/07 18:51:00 44.490 -129.557 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 3.9 2010/05/07 18:48:37 44.458 -129.107 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.5 2010/05/07 18:43:08 44.456 -129.410 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.4 2010/05/07 18:41:55 44.407 -129.456 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 5.1 2010/05/07 17:46:15 44.396 -129.437 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
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You know, my wife and I are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest this fall. Between this and Mount Hood, I might have to change our plans to the beautiful beaches of the Gulf Coast.
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They are awfully beautiful beaches. If you choose to visit scenic Olympia . . . well, we don't really have much in the way of beaches. But you can come by for dinner!
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Gillian
"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"
"You can't erase icing."
"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"
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There are some really beautiful beaches out on the Olympic Peninsula and Oregon Coast.
Hmm, where is my shot of Ruby Beach?
http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/f.../rubybeach.jpg There ye go.
As to Hood? Well, you could drive down to Ca. if you needed to get an ash-free airport, and anyhow, volcanos do this all the time, and usually don't go off.
The south edge of the Juan de Fuca plate? It seems to shake every month or so.
Last edited by jj_0001; 2010-May-08 at 08:47 AM. Reason: Premature Clickage
Order of Kilopi
The USGS doesn't have a 'beachball' for this quake (why?), but it is right next to the transform fault which has exhibited only transform-related strike/slip movement in the recent past.
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_vzbx_m.html
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Seam to be fault related, and nothing new today from it. Still all but one of the events was dirrectly under a Sea Mount. All told it looks like it relesed as much energy as a single 6.0 quake.
Order of Kilopi
Whooping? You mean like the cough? Or do you mean "whopping"? If so, is 5.1 really so big?Originally Posted by dgavin
BTW, we had an interesting earthquake during lunch yesterday. It was just 4.0, but it was really right below us. There was no shaking, but we felt these kinds of thuds coming up from the ground. The epicenter was like 40 km under us.
As above, so below
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5.1 is not that big. However, a whooping earthquake would be interesting to experience. Much more unusual than the ordinary rumbling ones.
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Gillian
"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"
"You can't erase icing."
"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"
Established Member
Yes well, while whooping quakes might be a bit more entertaining the whopping ones, I had ment the latter:P
Looks like this seiries is over, still nothing since the last 4.4 on Thursday. Neither USGS or NOAA has made any sort of statements yet.
So as it sits it's looking like this is transform fault activity, as mentioned by geonuc, even though most of these occured under a Sea Mount its very unlikely this is releated to volcanism of a it.
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There was another 5.1 Mag Quake on the Jaun de Fuca Plate off Oregon coast, this time located in the North Gordo region.
Again no tsunami warnings will be issued for this event.
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Just a followup on the new 5.1 Quake from yesterday , it was followed by a 4.1 quake in the same region and then by a 2.7 in the South Gordo area.
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A busy quake day for the oregon, another 4.1 and then 4.0 in the North Gordo region of the Jaun de Fuca plate.
Quite a few meduim sized quakes in the last month on this plate. Haven't heard of a historical president for these size of quake's in the quantity there happening, so don;t know what to make of it, other then as Vulancs might say, "Fasinating."
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Nothing new to report here.
However I did go through the historic quakes data a bit over the weekend, and actualy quake swarms of these sizes are entirely normal for the region. The plate seems to produce very few quakes under a 3.0 magnitude historically.
This might be due to the lack of a siemographs near the active regions of the plate, but I don't think that is the case these days. The Mt Hood 2.7 quake was picked up easily on Crater Lake and Mt. Shasta siesmographs, which is further in distance then the events were to the on shore siesmology stations.
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One more smaller quake last night 3.4 mag at the south transform fault between Jan de Fuca Plate and the Pacific Plate.
Over all an intresting series of events, starting with a single quake on the north of the plate roughly east of seattle, followeed by swarms of mid range earth quakes that slowly seem to migrate south. Can't say I've ever heard of Jaun de Fuca quite being this active EQ wise before, It's allready hit it's yearly average of quakes in just a matter of three weeks. I do not think it portends anything at this point.
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Another 3.0 along the transform fault between Jan de Fuca Plate and the Pacific Plate today. A bit closer to the coast then the last one.
Order of Kilopi
I wonder if all the stress being relieved at the transform fault will be transferred to the subduction zone? In other words, as one section of the micro-plate boundary loosens up, the leading edge gets more stressed.
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Geonuc
As the North to south migration of the swarms alonth the transform regions do indicate some sort of release of stresses there, I think it's safe to say the pressure might be trasfered towards the direction of the subduction region. Not much is really known about the Jaun de Fuca Subduction zone and plate historically though, other then the Native's legends of the 'Thunderbird' which might of been a description for a megatrust event.
It's only been recently monitoed (past 30 years or so) by siesmographs so there are a lot of unknowns about this tiny, state sized tectonic plate. But what you are wondering, makes sense to some degree from what this swarm event is doing.
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A minor 2.8 Quake today at the junction of the Jan De Fuca, North American, and Pacific Plates. Again eastward location from pervious. I think you have the right of it geonuc, its starting to look like a gradual migration of plate stresses.
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Three more quakes at the south junction of Jan De Fuca and Pacific plates today, largest being 4.2 mag.
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There were a few more minor quake following my last post, not very notable.
However today there was another 4.4 Magnitude quake located back in the same region of the originally posted about 5.1 Quake.
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Well Jan-de-Fuca isn't quite done yet. There was a 5.1 EQ a few weeks ago on the canadian portion of the plate, followed by a 4.7 in the same region yesterday.
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About 3 hours ago there was a 5.3 quake just 85 miles WNW of Coos Bay Oregon, just 15 miles W of the Juan de Fuca/Contiental Plate interface. No Tsunami warning issued for this quake.
Location on Google Maps
Although I don't really like saying this, these medium sized quakes over the last few months are now about double of the yearly average. I think there is a small, very small chance at this time these might be precursor events to a megathrust quake event.
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Is it possible that the built up strain is being released in small chunks? (yeah, I know, we'll know, after.)
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Basicaly thats the rub. It could just be small releases of pressure which is the most likely case, or it could be precursor events to a megatrust, the unlikely case.
However we won't really know till after like you said.
The frequency of quakes in the short time frame is unusual. Thats about the only thing that can be said point positive about it.
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