Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Momma's Movin'

I've been watching the USGS website for years now... the page where they watch Earthquakes of Magnitude 2.5 or Greater in the United States and Adjacent Areas and Magnitude 4.0 or Greater in the Rest of the World in the last 7 days.

My record of vigilence isn't perfect. But I look often enough that not many days in those years are left to mystery. Unfortunately I can't find an archive on the site. From time to time I journal the activity onto a calandar. At other times I just look and count. Thus I've got a pretty good read on daily averages over these years.

We just set a record! 83 shakers reported on the list 2 days ago. An average day would be in the low 20's. Ranges typically run from low teens on the low end to the low 30's on the high end. Over 70 of the 83 were in the same area of the big island of Hawaii. Most between 2.5 and 3. Its slowed down as of yesterday and so far today. But its still movin.

Thats just the list of the +2.5's. Theses are scattered 'mongst a whole lot more minors. Most are located between Pauahi and Makaopuhi craters at depths of about 1.5-3 km. About 10 to 15 small earthquakes per hour are being recorded in this area compared to more than about 100 per hour Sunday morning. Seismicity in the summit area consists of strong tremor.

More than a hundred per hour? Holy buckets!!!

Swarms like these are not that uncommon. I monitor other sites like Global Disaster Watch or Earth Changes TV to find reports of them because the USGS site only lists activity of 2.5 or greater and generally the differentiated events that collectively make up swarms are of lesser magnitude. Thats why this current swarm on the big island has the attention of the experts... the high number of 2.5+ activity.

And...

Craters?

The experts who study earthquake events are more and more connecting dots between shakers and volcanic activity. So it is on the big island....

GPS receivers in the area of most intense seismic activity continue to show widening across the rift zone in near Makaopuhi crater; preliminary data indicate widening of more than 40 cm (15 inches). A tiltmeter on Pu`u `O`o is also showing steady deflation.

Intermittent faint glow is only occasionally visible from the East Pond vent in the crater of Pu`u ``O`o, much less than is typical of the crater. On Sunday afternoon, HVO observers noted many rockfalls from the south wall of Pu`u `O`o cone and collapse of the crater floor around the vents. The lava level in East Pond vent dropped several meters in late morning.

All data indicate that an intrusion of magma started in the Mauna Ulu area early Sunday morning and moved slowly 5 km (3 miles) east along the rift zone during the day. The intrusion is continuing at this time.


Nauna Ulu has been putting on a show showhtml since 1984

Kilauea is also involved Pu`u `O`o is part of it.

Normally we could get a real time gander at the going's on.

But guess what? Current images are NOT AVAILABLE. Officially the continuously updated images have been "interrupted in order to do maintenance on the USGS web servers".

We'll see.

Or will we?

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I keep reading references to the predictions from Halfpasthuman on the Independence Journal site regarding earthquakes, comets, very high gamma rays from the sun, and perhaps an imminent shift of the earth's magnetic poles....then there's the astrological Saturn-Jupiter thing and the summer solstice tomorrow. I haven't got a clue, but somethin sure seems to be shakin'. Yesterday, I guess there was some sort of weird light in the night sky that had the Portland news crew asking people for pictures - they say it's some sort of weird cloud shine or something that has not been seen there before. Hummm. Where's an oracle when you need one?

Thursday, June 21, 2007 1:10:00 AM  

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