Earthquake Facts 101

[AJE]

Thanks to the USGS

:arrow: The largest recorded earthquake in the United States was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska on Good Friday, March 28, 1964 UTC.

:arrow: The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 (Mw) in Chile on May 22, 1960.

:arrow: The earliest reported earthquake in California was felt in 1769 by the exploring expedition of Gaspar de Portola while the group was camping about 48 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Los Angeles.

:arrow: Before electronics allowed recordings of large earthquakes, scientists built large spring-pendulum seismometers in an attempt to record the long-period motion produced by such quakes. The largest one weighed about 15 tons. There is a medium-sized one three stories high in Mexico City that is still in operation.

:arrow: The average rate of motion across the San Andreas Fault Zone during the past 3 million years is 56 mm/yr (2 in/yr). This is about the same rate at which your fingernails grow. Assuming this rate continues, scientists project that Los Angeles and San Francisco will be adjacent to one another in approximately 15 million years.

:arrow: The East African Rift System is a 50-60 km (31-37 miles) wide zone of active volcanics and faulting that extends north-south in eastern Africa for more than 3000 km (1864 miles) from Ethiopia in the north to Zambezi in the south. It is a rare example of an active continental rift zone, where a continental plate is attempting to split into two plates which are moving away from one another.

:arrow: The first "pendulum seismoscope" to measure the shaking of the ground during an earthquake was developed in 1751, and it wasn't until 1855 that faults were recognized as the source of earthquakes.

:arrow: Moonquakes ("earthquakes" on the moon) do occur, but they happen less frequently and have smaller magnitudes than earthquakes on the Earth. It appears they are related to the tidal stresses associated with the varying distance between the Earth and Moon. They also occur at great depth, about halfway between the surface and the center of the moon.

:arrow: Although both are sea waves, a tsunami and a tidal wave are two different unrelated phenomenona. A tidal wave is a shallow water wave caused by the gravitational interactions between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. A tsunami is a sea wave caused by an underwater earthquake or landslide (usually triggered by an earthquake) displacing the ocean water.

:arrow: The hypocenter of an earthquake is the location beneath the earth's surface where the rupture of the fault begins. The epicenter of an earthquake is the location directly above the hypocenter on the surface of the earth.

:arrow: The greatest mountain range is the Mid-Ocean Ridge, extending 64,374 km (40,000 mi) from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, around Africa, Asia, and Australia, and under the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of North America. It has a greatest height of 4207 m (13,800 ft) above the base ocean depth.

:arrow: The world's greatest land mountain range is the Himalaya-Karakoram. It countains 96 of the world's 109 peaks of over 7317 m (24,000 ft). The longest range is the Andes of South America which is 7564 km (4700 mi) in length. Both were created bythe movement of tectonic plates.

:arrow: It is estimated that there are 500,000 detectable earthquakes in the world each year. 100,000 of those can be felt, and 100 of them cause damage.

:arrow: It is thought that more damage was done by the resulting fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake than by the earthquake itself.

:arrow: A seiche (pronounced SAYSH) is what happens in the swimming pools of Californians during and after an earthquake. It is "an internal wave oscillating in a body of water" or, in other words, it is the sloshing of the water in your swimming pool, or any body of water, caused by the ground shaking in an earthquake. It may continue for a few moments or hours, long after the generating force is gone. A seiche can also be caused by wind or tides.

:arrow: Each year the southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes. Most of them are so small that they are not felt. Only several hundred are greater than magnitude 3.0, and only about 15-20 are greater than magnitude 4.0. If there is a large earthquake, however, the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for many months.

:arrow: The magnitude of an earthquake is a measured value of the earthquake size. The magnitude is the same no matter where you are, or how strong or weak the shaking was in various locations.
The intensity of an earthquake is a measure of the shaking created by the earthquake, and this value does vary with location.

:arrow: The Wasatch Range, with its outstanding ski areas, runs North-South through Utah, and like all mountain ranges it was produced by a series of earthquakes. The 386 km (240-mile)-long Wasatch Fault is made up of several segments, each capable of producing up to a M7.5 earthquake. During the past 6000 years, there has been a M6.5+ about once every 350 years, and it has been 150 years since the last powerful earthquake.

:arrow: There is no such thing as "earthquake weather". Statistically, there is an equal distribution of earthquakes in cold weather, hot weather, rainy weather, etc. Furthermore, there is no physical way that the weather could affect the forces several miles beneath the surface of the earth. The changes in barometric pressure in the atmosphere are very small compared to the forces in the crust, and the effect of the barometric pressure does not reach beneath the soil.

:arrow: From 1975-1995 there were only four states that did not have any earthquakes. They were: Florida, Iowa, North Dakota, and Wisconsin.

:arrow: The core of the earth was the first internal structural element to be identified. In 1906 R.D. Oldham discovered it from his studies of earthquake records. The inner core is solid, and the outer core is liquid and so does not transmit the shear wave energy released during an earthquake.

:arrow: The swimming pool at the University of Arizona in Tucson lost water from sloshing (seiche) caused by the 1985 M8.1 Michoacan, Mexico earthquake 2000 km (1240 miles) away.

:arrow: Earthquakes occur in the central portion of the United States too! Some very powerful earthquakes occurred along the New Madrid fault in the Mississippi Valley in 1811-1812. The effects of shaking from these magnitude 8+ earthquakes caused church bells to ring in Boston, Massachusetts, nearly 1600 km (1000 miles) away.

:arrow: Most earthquakes occur at depths of less than 80 km (50 miles) from the Earth's surface.

:arrow: The San Andreas fault is NOT a single, continuous fault, but rather is actually a fault zone made up of many segments. Movement may occur along any of the many fault segments along the zone at any time. The San Andreas fault system is more that 1300 km (800 miles) long, and in some spots is as much as 16 km (10 miles) deep.

:arrow: The world's deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1556 in central China. It struck a region where most people lived in caves carved from soft rock. These dwellings collapsed during the earthquake, killing an estimated 830,000 people. In 1976 another deadly earthquake struck in Tangshan, China, where more than 250,000 people were killed.

:arrow: Florida and North Dakota have the smallest number of earthquakes in the United States.

:arrow: The deepest earthquakes typically occur at plate boundaries where the Earth's crust is being subducted into the Earth's mantle. These occur as deep as 750 km (400 miles) below the surface.

:arrow: Alaska is the most earthquake-prone state and one of the most seismically active regions in the world. Alaska experiences a magnitude 7 earthquake almost every year, and a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake on average every 14 years.

:arrow: The majority of the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur along plate boundaries such as the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate. One of the most active plate boundaries where earthquakes and eruptions are frequent, for example, is around the massive Pacific Plate commonly referred to as the Pacific Ring of Fire.

:arrow: The earliest recorded evidence of an earthquake has been traced back to 1831 BC in the Shandong province of China, but there is a fairly complete record starting in 780 BC during the Zhou Dynasty in China.

:arrow: It was recognized as early as 350 BC by the Greek scientist Aristotle that soft ground shakes more than hard rock in an earthquake.

:arrow: The cause of earthquakes was stated correctly in 1760 by British engineer John Michell, one of the first fathers of seismology, in a memoir where he wrote that earthquakes and the waves of energy that they make are caused by "shifting masses of rock miles below the surface".

:arrow: In 1663 the European settlers experienced their first earthquake in America.

:arrow: Human beings can detect sounds in the frequency range 20-10,000 Hertz. If a P wave refracts out of the rock surface into the air, and it has a frequency in the audible range, it will be heard as a rumble. Most earthquake waves have a frequency of less than 20 Hz, so the waves themselves are usually not heard. Most of the rumbling noise heard during an earthquake is the building and its contents moving.

:arrow: When the Chilean earthquake occurred in 1960, seismographs recorded seismic waves that traveled all around the Earth. These seismic waves shook the entire earth for many days! This phenomenon is called the free oscillation of the Earth.

:arrow: The San Andreas Fault was named in 1895 by geologist A.C. Lawson. He named it after the San Andreas Lake, a sag pond through which the fault passes about 20 miles south of San Francisco. He likely did not realize at the time that the fault ran almost the entire length of California!

:arrow: The interior of Antarctica has icequakes which, although they are much smaller, are perhaps more frequent than earthquakes in Antarctica. The icequakes are similar to earthquakes, but occur within the ice sheet itself instead of the land underneath the ice. Some of our polar observers have told us they can hear the icequakes and see them on the South Pole seismograph station, but they are much too small to be seen on enough stations to obtain a location.

[AJE]

Midwest Related

Studies of historic seismic activities in the New Madrid and Wabash Valley suggest that within the next 50 years an earthquake of 7.5 to 8.0 magnitude has a 7 to 10 percent chance of occurring and an earthquake of 6.0 magnitude or greater has a 25 to 40 percent chance of occurring.


This happens say good-bye to St. Louis and we here in Wisconsin would feel the shocks. For the complete article "Earthquake Hazard in the Heart of the Homeland" please see

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-131-02/fs-131-02-p4.html

[AJE]

Wisconsin Related
Source USGS
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/...in/history.php

Earthquake History
An earthquake on May 6, 1947, apparently centered just south of Milwaukee near the shore of Lake Michigan, caused only minor damage. There were no reports of injuries. The 4:25 a.m. CDT tremor shook buildings and rattled windows in many communities in a 7770 square kilometer area of southeastern Wisconsin. There were a few reports of broken windows at Kenosha (MM V), and residents of other communities reported that dishes and glasses had fallen from shelves. Some frightened Milwaukee residents ran into the streets in the belief there had been a serious explosion. The shock was felt in a 160 kilometer wide strip from Sheboygan to the Wisconsin - Illinois border and extended from the lakeshore to Waukesha, 40 kilometers inland.

Moderate shaking was reported at many places in Wisconsin from the strong earthquake centered near Charleston, South Carolina, on August 31, 1886. Intensity at Beloit, Janesville, and Milwaukee was estimated at V. A May 26, 1909, earthquake damaged many chimneys at Aurora, Illinois, and cause MM VII effects over a considerable area from Bloomington, Illinois, to Platteville, Wisconsin. Two more moderate shocks affected the same area on January 2, 1912. The first tremor was MM VI at Aurora, Freeport, Morris, and Yorkville, Illinois, and was followed by a lighter shock. Felt reports were received from Madison and Milwaukee.

An earthquake centered in eastern Missouri on April 9, 1919, affected a broad area from Wisconsin to Mississippi and from Kansas to Ohio, approximately 320,000 square kilometers. In the epicentral region between St. Louis and New Madrid, windows were broken and plaster cracked. Two shocks of short duration were reported felt at Madison (MM II).

Scattered felt reports in Wisconsin were noted from a major earthquake in the St. Lawrence River region near La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, on February 28, 1925. The magnitude (M) 7.0 shock was felt over an area of approximately 5,000,000 square kilometers. Intensity at La Crosse and Milwaukee was estimated at III. Another strong Canadian earthquake (M=6 1/4) affected a large area of the northeastern and north-central United States on November 1, 1935. The 2,500,000 square kilometer felt area included most of eastern Wisconsin (MM I - III) and scattered points elsewhere in the State.

Two strong earthquakes near Anna, Ohio, on March 2 and 8, 1937, caused damage to buildings in the epicentral area and were reported felt over a six State region. The second shock was perhaps slightly stronger and more widespread than that of March 2, but the difference was not great. Both earthquakes were felt at Milwaukee; the latter tremor was also reported felt at Madison.

On November 23, 1939, a shock in southern Illinois having maximum intensity just short of damage (MM V) caused slight disturbances over an unusually large area (390,000 square kilometers). The intensity at Janesville, Wisconsin, was I - III. Medford, Milwaukee, and Racine felt minor vibrations from a moderate earthquake in south-central Michigan on August 9, 1947. Broken windows and considerable plaster and chimney damage were observed over a 30 kilometer radius from the epicenter, located near Coldwater, Michigan. The total felt area covered approximately 130,000 square kilometers and included portions of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

The strongest earthquake in the central United States in 74 years occurred on November 9, 1968, in south-central Illinois. The shock was felt over an area of approximately 1,500,000 square kilometers, including all or portions of 23 States and southern Ontario, Canada. Measured at magnitude 5.3, maximum intensity reached VII in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri. MM V was reported from Jefferson and Kenosha, Wisconsin, and MM I - IV, at Baraboo. LaCrosse, Milwaukee, Port Washington, Portage, Prairie Du Chien, and Sheboygan. Press reports indicated that the shock was also felt at Beloit, Janesville, and Madison.

Another earthquake in Illinois, about 500 kilometers north of the 1968 epicenter, caused slight damage at several places in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The September 14, 1972, tremor (M=3.7) was felt over 650,000 square kilometers, including Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and the four States mentioned above. Cracked plaster (MM V) was noted at Kewaskum, Milton, Nashotah, and Zenda, Wisconsin. A report from Browntown noted that water pipes leaked after the shock.

Felt reports (MM I - III) were received from Kansasville, Mount Hope, and Trevor, Wisconsin, following a magnitude 4 3/4 earthquake on April 3, 1974, centered near the 1968 epicenter in southern Illinois. Within 1 hour or so, a number of tornadoes passed through the area affected by the earthquake. It is possible some of the reports confused the effects caused by the earthquake and those caused by the tornadoes.

[frank-e]

Yes !
Here is the most recent activity...Read the prophecies and you will know about the ring of fire...
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/

Last month My husband was looking out the window and saw the flag pole doing what he said a unnatural movement when the wind was not blowing strong and I also heard the pole outside at work creaking real weirdly at about the same time and the building was also doing a creaking sound that I never heard before.I noticed that is when the earth quake was active.I looked at the earthquake time and that happened all around the same time in many different areas often world.That was also a few hours after the bridge fell down in Minnesota.So I believe that bridge Had a helping hand with it's falling.That earthquake could have been very low in the ground and not been picked up enough to report as anything major here ...but it could have done something enough to help that bridge fall in. Also..That bridge had Huge loads of sand on one side. for use of doing work on the bridge and around it's boarder. That the news was not reported and it was heavy enough to make it fall.I know about the sand because a Friend of mine..her relatives saw the sand on the bridge that same night before the bridge fell in!She said it was a huge amount of sand and it was all on that bridge.Just very sad!I don't think they are giving the whole story about that bridge falling in.

Also if you know anything about our goverments secret earthquake maker you might want to read up on that, it is just very interesting.


The 1968 quake, lived in ILL>I felt that and I remember my mom saying we area having an earthquake..I was about ten years old then.