BREAKING NEWS: Two strong earthquakes in California

[Brent]

5.9 and 5.0 near Paso Robles.

[Josephine96]

Thanks for that

[Miss Mary]

Any connection between these quakes and recent activity at Mt. St. Helens? Or are they too far apart?

Mary

[Brent]

Any connection between these quakes and recent activity at Mt. St. Helens? Or are they too far apart?

Mary

I doubt it.

[GalvestonDuck]

Looks like there's been a series of them over the past hour.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/ ... .-119.html

And two near Mt. St. Helens.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/ ... .-121.html

[TexasStooge]

Hope everyone's alright there!

[Brent]

TEN aftershocks.

Same area where a 6.2 hit right before Christmas and killed 2 people.

[GalvestonDuck]

Quakes on the west coast, 'canes on the east and Gulf coasts, volcano in the northwest.

Anyone betting on a really rough winter in the midwest and northeast this year? Or was that last year and we don't have to worry?

[southerngale]

I heard 25 aftershocks.

[Brent]

I heard 25 aftershocks.

Yeah... that sounds bad, but a guy on Fox said hundreds usually occur. 95% you don't feel and the first one is almost always the big one.

[therock1811]

Golly...looks like there have been 50 earthquakes with 11 of them above magnitude 3.0 since 1:15pm ET? Or am I miscounting? Granted some are normal but geez?

[Brent]

Golly...looks like there have been 50 earthquakes with 11 of them above magnitude 3.0 since 1:15pm ET? Or am I miscounting? Granted some are normal but geez?

I'm a little amazed at that too. That's one per minute. At first it was 10 aftershocks, then 25, and now 50.

[Josephine96]

Sounds to me like it's a bit of a shaky day out there

[Brent]

The good news is... the quake was less than 6.0, which isn't that big of a deal out in California and it was in a very rural area. I can't even find Parkfield on the map(where the epicenter was).

[therock1811]

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&countryid=US&addtohistory=&searchtab=address&searchtype=address&address=&city=Parkfield&state=CA&zipcode=&search=++Search++

Used mapquest to find it.

[therock1811]

Oh and I hate to say it but it is 6.0 now...reported by USGS.

[chicagopizza]

Not that it compares at all to what is going on in CA, but my in-laws called from Indianapolis last week and said there was a very small earthquake there.

I thought they were joking, but it turned out to be true. Strage things happeneing all over the place. Hopeflly, everyone is ok out in CA.

[NoCalGal]

That area is mostly settled with large produce farming... Parkville, Ca.....and there are many earth sensors in that area since it is fairly active (most times small ones) I believe it is a part of the San Andreas fault line...or an offshoot from it.
So far, no reports of people injured.... and no reports of building damage as yet. However, a 6 is sure big enough to cause some damage.
Parkville is part of California's Central Valley...over close to the Coast Ranges.
(Native California rock n roller!! lol)

[Wnghs2007]

Man this is getting real freaky. With all these hurricanes and earthquakes correlating with each other. whats up with that.

[Aslkahuna]

Actually, Parkfield is in an interior Coastal Valley and not the Central Valley of CA. It's SE of Hollister and east of the Santa Lucia Mountains
This earthquake is unrelated to the one near Paso Robles, though Paso is not too far from Parkfield. This is apparently the earthquake that the USGS has been waiting for since 1985 when they instrumented that segment of the San Andreas Fault. Parkfield gets a MM6.0 shock every 20-30 years on average and has been doing so since at least 1857. So they set up a project to capture as much data as they could on the one expected to follow the last one in 1966. The 38 year time interval is longer than expected but it is believed that the Coalinga shock in the 1980's changed the stress patterns and thus delayed this event. The intial shock was followed 4 minutes later by a M=5.0 aftershock. The aftershock pattern seems unusually active in the early hours but often these aftershock swarms settle down fast. I'm sure the USGS scientists are very happy today. Parkfield is used to these and being a very small community (Pop. 34) and in a remote area, there will probably be no fatalities.

Meanwhile, unrelated to the Parkfield event are the latest very shallow volcanic events on St. Helens. It appears that the activity has really ramped up and that there are harmonic tremors as well so some sort of eruptive event (most likely a steam event) is coming. COSPEC readings didn't show any increase of SO2 so a magmatic event seems unlikely.

Steve