Alaska had a 7.5 magnitude quake and a Tsunami warning was triggered
An initial earthquake with a 7.5 magnitude occurred around Sand Point, Alaska, a city on one of the Shumagin Islands, at about 5:14 p.m. E.T., according to the Official U.S. Geological Survey. An aftershock hit the area about 20 minutes later at a magnitude of 5.8, the USGS said.
The National Weather Service issued a tsunami warning for the Pacific coasts from Kennedy Entrance, Alaska to Unimak Pass, Alaska. Police in Homer, Alaska, asked anyone in the potential flooding zone to move to higher ground immediately in fear of a potential tsunami.
@lovendures Thank you for letting us know. I hope people are okay. We had some predictions about quakes and tsunami in the NorthWest.
Earthquake in Turkey and subsequent Tsunami in Greece I think today or yesterday.
Well, I didn’t feel it in Eastham but others did, in addition to people all over the Cape and other parts of Mass and Ct and RI—a 4.2 earthquake this morning in Buzzards Bay. Oscar, our cat, was acting strange and this explains why.
3 large earthquakes, the latest an 8.1, have struck off New Zealand triggering a tsunami warning telling people living along the coat to flee to higher ground. A tsunami watch has been issued for Hawaii.
Lots of reports on twitter that water is moving out in the Northern section of N.Z. ( As of 10 minutes ago). Their tsunami siren is intense.
Prayers for the people of New Zealand.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/04/world/new-zealand-quake-tsunami-warning-intl/index.html
Ok, friends -- it took me forever to find this thread because I KNEW we had one on earthquakes and tsunamis, and, after some searching and scouring, here we are!
I am posting because I came across this fellow on Twitter. Feel free to scroll through his posts (he has pinned some helpful posts at the top of his feed), but the long and the short of it is that he has been studying the earth's tectonic plates for some time now and he feels a massive earthquake (what he terms a 'megaquake') and resultant tsunami are imminent.
It's all very science-y and much is beyond my ability to understand but what I do understand is making me feel a bit icky. (It seems two large plates in Asia have become jammed, and [insert Elaine Benes voice] yadda yadda yadda ... megaquake.)
So, I post here for two reasons: one, for those who want to have a look for themselves and offer their thoughts and opinions; and two, for those who might have an intuitive sense on whether such a thing might happen this year (he currently anticipates around September, but is not definitive on that timing -- he says 2023 at the latest).
(I am editing to add there are others who have predicted similar things, so it's not just this one person saying it. Many of his feed replies are people sharing the articles and videos of those making similar claims.)
Thoughts?
Someone tell me he's a quack 🤣
@sistermoon I'm certainly not an expert in this area (or much of any area, to be honest! 🤣), but while it's possible he's correct about the "jam-up", several of his and others' comments on his posts have an almost Q-anon vibe to them, talking about gov't and military conspiracies to keep this information quiet, etc. Again, I'm in no position to say if he's right or wrong, but honestly, it just sounds a lot like fear mongering to me.
@sistermoon I'm certainly not an expert in this area (or much of any area, to be honest! 🤣), but while it's possible he's correct about the "jam-up", several of his and others' comments on his posts have an almost Q-anon vibe to them, talking about gov't and military conspiracies to keep this information quiet, etc. Again, I'm in no position to say if he's right or wrong, but honestly, it just sounds a lot like fear mongering to me.
yeah, I thought the same -- as long as no one here has visions of earthquakes or tsunamis, I'll be happy! 😆
This made me think of a 2015 piece in the New Yorker on the work of seismologists re: Cascadian subduction (one sliding beneath another I think) tectonic plates in the Pacific Northwest. They give odds of 1 in 3 for a big earthquake there in the next 50 years, 1 in 10 chances of a very big one (cataclysmic) in the next 50 years. Not imminent apparently. The article is detailed and interesting.
Someone tell me he's a quack 🤣
I looked at the Twitter feed. Heard a lot of ducks...
The Cascadia predictions are based on actual science but no one should freak out about them. The odds of anything happening in the near term and causing mass destruction are low.
Exactly. 1 in 10 chance over fifty years - there are greater worries than this.
As a resident of western Washington state, I’m definitely familiar with that New Yorker article on the Cascadian Subduction zone and the Juan de Fuca plate. The twitter earthquake guy sure sounds radical to me, @sistermoon. I follow earthquake activity because of my location and I have never seen any reputable researcher publish a global warning like the Canadian Earthquake Researcher on twitter. In my travel around Northwest coastal areas, I’m always reminded of our vulnerability to tsunamis because tsunami evacuation routes are posted in every coastal town. And I also know that there have been major tsunamis that hit the northwest centuries ago.
Now I’m not especially tuned into earthquakes, but others like @Tonya on our site are. For what it’s worth, I don’t have any sense of impending cataclysmic earthquakes. (Aren’t we dealing with enough already with global pandemic, ongoing political insurgency in the U.S, inflation, global warming, recession and Russia invading Ukraine? Seriously, we need a break.)
(Aren’t we dealing with enough already with global pandemic, ongoing political insurgency in the U.S, inflation, global warming, recession and Russia invading Ukraine? Seriously, we need a break.)
True -- but that's precisely why I thought it best to get everyone's spidey senses on this -- at this point, if Godzilla emerged from the sea, I wouldn't even think twice about it 🤣 🤣
Ok. So like most things it is both fact and fiction.
There are areas with “jammed” tectonic plates. These areas do produce larger than normal earthquakes (7-9 on the scale). It produces what is called a back-arc thrust earthquake.
Is there a mega quake that will shake the world apart. Not likely. (Yellowstone Eruption is much more likely)
Are earthquakes changing frequency, yes. But science seems to believe this is part of a natural process. According to the USGS, statistically we should have around 16 major quakes a year. In the past 5 decades we have exceeded that average over a dozen times. Some years more, some years less. Part of the natural process.
article mentioning “jammed” tectonic plates:
article on average quakes per year:
article on average quakes per year:
The important takeaway from that article is this:
The ComCat earthquake catalog contains an increasing number of earthquakes in recent years--not because there are more earthquakes, but because there are more seismic instruments and they are able to record more earthquakes.
The important takeaway from that article is this:
The ComCat earthquake catalog contains an increasing number of earthquakes in recent years--not because there are more earthquakes, but because there are more seismic instruments and they are able to record more earthquakes.
What is interesting is that this guy is arguing that there has actually been a significant reduction in the number of earthquakes coming from the area in question (he says the epicenter will be near the Philippines), which he argues is an indicator of a lead-up to a major event.
Which is not to say I believe him -- I actually don't have any intuitive senses regarding this at all -- but I do appreciate everyone's input and am enjoying the conversation 😊
@sistermoon Haha! As soon as wrote my whine about all the things we are dealing with, I regretted it. Just because I’m tired of daily, weekly, yearly crises, doesn’t mean there’s a magical limit at which all disasters must stop. As Jeanne teaches in her tarot class, when you pull the wheel of fortune card, it doesn’t matter whether you’re on the top of the wheel or the bottom. What really matters is how you ride the wheel. There will be periods of life when all is rosy and you’re contented and there will be periods of life when you struggle. I realize I’m philosophizing and digress from the issues at hand. I’ve really enjoyed this topic and all the responses. Thank you!
What is interesting is that this guy is arguing that there has actually been a significant reduction in the number of earthquakes coming from the area in question (he says the epicenter will be near the Philippines), which he argues is an indicator of a lead-up to a major event.
It is true that when a fault zone goes "quiet" there is a good chance that excessive stress is building up on the fault.
Faults are fractures where there is relative movement of the lithosphere (that's crust and uppermost mantle) on either side of the fracture. These blocks of lithosphere are compelled to move by mantle convection and other forces. They *want* to move. When there's constant, smooth movement of the lithospheric blocks on either side of a fault, everything is hunky-dory and there are only very small, but frequent earthquakes which usually don't cause problems. But if the blocks get stuck trying to move, a lot of stress builds up, and when the stress finally overcomes the strength of the rock, the blocks may move suddenly and often very violently, releasing all that pent-up energy as seismic waves.
Therefore, if a fault has been seismically "quiet" there is a concern that when the movement does come, it has to make up for all that "quiet time" by letting loose with a "big one". This may or may not happen. A lucky "break" (ha ha, I made a pun!) could happen if a few medium quakes occurred to release the stress, instead of one big one. And it's pretty much impossible to predict with any precision when or if the "big one" or the "medium ones" might come.
@ana Very interesting -- thank you for this explanation!
While this fella definitely seems dubious (not sure sure about some of the accounts he follows and his likes are equally odd), I'll continue to monitor his account and report any interesting updates, and anyone who has any visions or dreams of impending doom can update also.
And hopefully, if he IS onto something, those medium quakes occur to release any built-up stress.
But fingers crossed he's 🤪