Click to view earthquake details and Nebraska seismic probabilities
Posted on 12/18/2009 6:58:12 PM PST by ETL
CURIOUS EVENTS IN NEBRASKA: Earthquakes don't rock Nebraska very often. In fact, seismically speaking, it is one of the quietest places in North America. Nevertheless, on Dec. 16th at 8:54 pm CST, USGS seismographs detected a magnitude 3.5 temblor centered near Auburn, Nebraska:
Click to view earthquake details and Nebraska seismic probabilities
"It sounded like those loud grain haulers that drive by, but about five times louder," reports Laurie Riley, who lives near the epicenter. "The whole house shook. My kids came running down stairs – they were scared. It even moved my car, [which was parked outside on icy ground]."
And then the really curious thing happened.
Minutes after the quake, around 9 pm CST, lightning-like flashes lit up the skies around the area of the quake. Telephones in police departments and TV stations rang with reports of bright lights, loud rumbles and shaking ground. Sky watchers, not only in southeastern Nebraska, but also in neighboring Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas, saw a "bright fireball" with "green streamers" moving from northwest to southeast.
Could these events be connected? Nebraska State Trooper Jerry Chab, an experienced amateur astronomer who witnessed the lights and was one of the first to report them, says no. "I think we have the most cosmic of coincidences: A bright [meteoritic] fireball around the same time as an earthquake." Indeed, eyewitness descriptions of the fireball are consistent with a meteoroid disintegrating in the atmosphere.
On the other hand, several readers have pointed out scientific studies that associate lightning-like phenomena (including ball lightning) with earthquakes: #1, #2, #3. The fireball, they suggest, might have been a rare manifestation of "earthquake lightning."
More reports could help sort out the possibilities. Readers with photos or eyewitness accounts are encouraged to submit their observations.
Sen. Nelson needs to go home now and check it out.
Signs in the sun, the moon and the stars....
ping
3.5 is pretty small.
Regards,
TS
I’ve heard of Smokestack Lightening...by Howling Wolf...
I question the timing.
check this out!
The area S and W of Oklahoma City have had several earthquakes over the last couple of days. Range anywhere from 2.6 to 3.2.
There is only one explanation- Bush’s Fault.
It’s called “ball lightning” or “St. Elmo’s fire” and is a discharge of hot and highly ionized matter known as plasma. It’s been documented in Australia and a few other places as occuring before or during earthquakes.
SHAKEN AND SHOCKED
Are big quakes electrifying events? The rocks tell the tale.
It sounds like a paranormal phenomenon: people reporting an unexplained glow, lasting up to several minutes, near the epicenter of a major earthquake that takes place at night.
Such reports have come for decades from far-flung, seismically active places--from California and Oregon, Turkey, Chile, Japan. The tantalizing anecdotes suggest that big quakes generate brief but intense electrical currents that can create what amounts to a "spark" along a ruptured fault. The phenomenon, associated mainly with quakes over magnitude 6.0, gained some short-lived scientific attention in the 1970s, as well as a name--"earthquake lightning." But most scientists have not taken it very seriously. Eric Ferré does. If earthquake lightning exists, it may open possibilities for an earthquake early-warning network based not on seismic waves, which travel at about the speed of sound, but on electrical currents, which travel at the speed of light. Such a network, he says, could give near-real-time warning of a quake whose waves are still many minutes away from a big city.
Scientists in the United States, Europe, and Japan have scrutinized electrical data after the fact and have detected minute increases in electrical activity just before or during big quakes. They've suggested various alternative explanations for these findings, such as earthquake-triggered shifts in the water table or failure of power grids. So Ferré, an assistant professor of geology at SIUC, has gone to the rocks for answers.
The best evidence for earthquake lightning, he says, is locked up in dark veins that are often found cutting through rocks in quake-prone areas. The thin, sheet-like veins resemble a glassy black volcanic rock called tachylite--hence the name "pseudotachylites." Ferré calls them the "black boxes" of earthquakes because, he says, they record information crucial to understanding catastrophic seismic events.
3.5 small...now ball lightening is an interesting factor...
Not in Nebraska.
If you ever get a foot of snow in downtown LA, I'll say that's not much, considering that I grew up in New England ;-)
:)
Perhaps God is sending Nelson a message!
I recall reading of peculiar atmospheric effects preceding the big New Madrid quakes in the early 1800’s, but it didn’t involve anything like lightning. Wish I could remember the author, but he described a dark, oppressive pall, referred to it as a miasma, with odd odors. Can’t recall where it was, but Cape Girardeau springs to memory.
Of course, the fault system underlies parts of the riverbed itself, so that could explain part of it, odors and miasmas. But, not the unnatural, disturbing darkness described.
“3.5 is pretty small.”
Not for that area. I grew up there, and though you’re astride the Humboldt Fault, neither I, nor anyone else I knew had ever experienced a quake. The folks I talked to, living in the area, told me that they didn’t even consider a quake as a possibility. Kids tearing the house up, train wreck, gas explosion were some of their impressions. Tremors are foreign to those folks.
Coincidence possibly. It would be neat if the fireball caused it, but the locals tell me I’m crazy. Probably true, as Nebraskans are good judges of character.
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