"...There was a horrifically destructive Pacific earthquake in New Zealand on Feb. 22,
and an even more violent magnitude-8.8 event in Chile almost exactly a year before.
All three phenomena
involved more or less the same family of circum-Pacific fault lines and plate boundaries
—and though there is still no hard scientific evidence to explain why,
there is little doubt now that earthquakes do tend to occur in clusters:
a significant event on one side of a major tectonic plate is often
—not invariably, but often enough to be noticeable
—followed some weeks or months later by another on the plate’s far side.
...Now there have been catastrophic events at three corners of the Pacific Plate
—one in the northwest, on Friday;
one in the southwest, last month;
one in the southeast, last year.
That leaves just one corner unaffected—the northeast.
And the fault line in the northeast of the Pacific Plate is the San Andreas Fault,
underpinning the city of San Francisco.
...the San Andreas Fault is due to rupture one day—it last did so in 1906,
and strains have built beneath it to a barely tolerable level.
To rupture again, ...some triggering event has to occur.
Now three events have occurred that might all be regarded as triggering events."
Winchester
2 comments:
To rupture again, ...some triggering event has to occur.
It is to my understanding that Japan has shifted approx. 10 feet from its original position. I would think this to be significant in the world of tectonic plate movement, although being a lay person I don't know the extent of its significance. We do know the Earth looks like a big baseball with the stitches being the plates, so why in the world would one want to built much less stay in such a potentially dangerous location. I've been to San Fran on a few occasions, on one such occasion I was at the bar in the Hyatt when the overhead glasses began to jingle, an errie feeling, of course the bartender laughed! Beau
I do not know about timing...no one can. However the idea of a release in one area is triggering the subsequent release in another area. For passive event "attendees," that means tragedy such as what occurred in Chile, New Zealand, and now Japan. The clock is ticking and I do not want to be a prognosticator - however major earthquake in Alaska or Pacific Northwest is due. Could that trigger Yellowstone?
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