Posted on 04/15/2011 5:33:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Nevada Seismologists are keeping a close eye on an area southwest of Hawthorne, Nevada where hundreds of earthquakes have been detected since Sunday. " It's a little bit concerning in a sense.. The largest earthquakes in these sequences are pretty large in size." Graham Kent is Director of Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada Reno. He says there have been hundreds of earthquakes southwest of Hawthorne over the past few days. The largest-- recorded at a 4.4 in size.
"These are the biggest in a sequence we've seen at least in the last couple of years." Kent says unlike the 2008 quakes in Somersett that damaged so many homes, these earthquakes are fortunately not underneath a community.
Size is not the only reason Kent says they are watching the swarm of quakes closely. The location of these quakes is on top of a fault that has until now remained unknown or has not been active. Kent then made an eerie comparison, "Whats really interesting about most of these earthquakes we've experienced. Short of the Chilean and Japanese; Haiti, Baha, even Christchurch.. Were on unknown faults.
But Kent says just because those devastating quakes happened on un-named faults does not mean that the series of quakes near Hawthorne will lead to a big quake there. Reno, Carson City and the Las Vegas valley all lie on top of fault lines. And right now, there is no way to predict where the next big quake will occur.
(Excerpt) Read more at mynews4.com ...
I thought Las Vegas was a no fault zone.
I have felt a couple of these larger quakes centered near the ghost town of Aurora on the Nevada/California border.
My old stompin’ grounds...felt my first temblor there in Hawthorne, like a wave. Didn’t care for it much, but preferred it to the tornados and T-storms in Texas.
Magma could be pushing up from deep below.
It’s Bush’s fault.
When I said no fault zone, I wasn’t thinking of earthquakes.
It appears my attempt at humor went flat. Guess I won’t quit my day job.
use
/s
after your comment.
I got it.
Nope, Harry Reid’s!
Look forward to the explanation. Does this have something to do with the mining? Beginnings of a magma intrusion and new volcano? Something more Sci Fi....perhaps worms seeking spice in the basin, or the mining has disturbed the old ones who are arising from their long slumber....
Normally I pipe in on these with the nothing to see here.
This time around there is an unusual component to this in that the line of apparent aftershocks is trending NE-SW which is 90 degrees to the regional trend of NNW-SSE. I initially though this could represent the development of a strike-slip system, however, all the moment tensors indicate normal faulting.
This will keep the seismologists at the UNR and USGS scratching their heads for a while.
These are shallow quakes, volcanic activity would have deeper activity along with distinguishable harmonics.
It’s just Harry’s friends coming to visit from hell.
Is this anywhere near Perfection, Nevada?
Hawthorne has a VERY large weapons depot.
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