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An area off the coast of Washington state is being shaken by hundreds and hundreds of earthquakes. So is this an indication of potential trouble for the Cascadia Subduction Zone?
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At this point, there is so much that we don’t know. Scientists are telling us that the quakes are centered around a large underwater volcano. The underwater volcano does not pose a threat at all, but if an enormous earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone were to trigger a giant tsunami that slams into the west coast, that would be a historic disaster of epic proportions.
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The frequency of the earthquakes that we are witnessing off the coast of Washington is extremely alarming.
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It is being reported that earlier this month there were “as many as 200 in a single hour”…
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Scientists have detected a ‘great swarm’ of earthquakes off the coast of Washington clocking as many as 200 in a single hour during one day.
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That is a lot of quakes!
According to one of the experts that has been monitoring this area, there were over 2,000 earthquakes in a single day…
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“It’s about 10 times as active as it normally is,” said Jesse Hutchinson, a junior staff scientist with ONC, an ocean observation facility based at the University of Victoria.
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He said more than 2,000 earthquakes had been detected in one day.
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Why haven’t we heard more about this?
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If I was living on the west coast, I would definitely want this to be in the news.
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We are being told that this “great swarm” of earthquakes potentially means that a “magmatic rupture” is imminent…
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The ‘great swarm’ of earthquakes followed multiple days of increasingly frequent quakes, according to Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), which is collecting the data for researchers to study.
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The spike indicated a possible ‘impending magmatic rupture,’ the research group reported.
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A magmatic rupture, which occurs when the Earth’s crust splits open for some reason and spills molten rock out, is a natural phenomena that can form new ocean floor, according to Zoe Krauss, a marine seismology PhD candidate at the University of Washington.
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A “magmatic rupture” would not be a problem.
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But what happens if this area continues to shake violently and eventually an extremely large earthquake is triggered along the Cascadia Subduction Zone?
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As Popular Mechanics has accurately observed, that would create the sort of disaster that very few people would want to see…
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In this case, there are two opposing forces: the North American Plate, an enormous tectonic plate that carries the entire continental United States on its back, versus the 90,000-square-mile Juan de Fuca Plate, located in the ocean off Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. These two have been squaring off in an epic wrestling match in an area known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone, or CSZ. Trust us, nobody wants to see the end of this round. Yet only a few people seem truly bothered: seismologists, emergency management professionals, and those who have experienced earthquakes before.
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It’s certain that the Northwest will experience a devastating earthquake again, says Chris Goldfinger, an oceanographer at Oregon State University and one of the world’s leading experts on subduction zone earthquakes. “We have no idea of the timing and how urgent it is,” Goldfinger tells Pop Mech. “People tend to ignore it in that case.” The majority of the public, as well as most governments in the Northwest, aren’t yet pushing to implement the extensive infrastructure changes and early-warning communications systems needed to save tens of thousands of lives.
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Such an earthquake could potentially create a colossal tsunami that is hundreds of feet high.
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A tsunami of that magnitude would cause destruction on a scale that most of us cannot even imagine right now.
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In 2015, the former head of FEMA’s Region X was quoted by the New Yorker as saying that “everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast”…
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If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one.
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…By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”
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In the Pacific Northwest, everything west of Interstate 5 covers some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people.
It would be the greatest natural disaster in the entire recorded history of our nation up to that point.
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Sadly, it is inevitable that great natural disasters will come. Our planet is becoming so unstable, and we are seeing very strange things happen all over the globe.
For example, very long and very deep cracks in the ground have started to appear in Libya…
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Unusually large and deep earth cracks have suddenly appeared in an agricultural region south of Tripoli, causing alarm among the local population. In response, the Libyan government has initiated an investigation and dispatched a specialized geological team from the Ministry of Local Governance to conduct thorough surveys of the affected areas, particularly focusing on agricultural lands.
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Parallelly, the Libyan Ministry of Environment and their Environmental Affairs Monitoring Department in “Al-Sbeea” are taking the lead in overseeing and documenting the ground cracks. This concerted effort aims to compile a detailed report, which will serve as a critical tool in understanding the origins, implications, and potential risks posed by the fissures.
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And we have reached a stage where we are constantly witnessing unusual shaking all over the globe.
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Just yesterday, a magnitude 3.8 earthquake rattled a very large area in northern Israel…
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Residents of northern and central Israel reported feeling an earthquake on Wednesday, Israeli media reported.
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The Geological Institute reported that the earthquake felt by northern residents had a magnitude of 3.8 on the Richter scale, and occurred at a depth of approximately 17 km.
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There were reports that the earthquake was felt in Tiberias, the Jordan Valley, Karmiel, Haifa, and the Hadera area. Some felt the earthquake even further south in areas such as Rehovot and Modi’in.
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Today, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake that shook the Fukushima prefecture in Japan made lots of headlines…
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An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8 hit eastern Japan early on Friday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
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The epicentre of the earthquake was off the coast of Fukushima prefecture, where strong tremors were recorded, the agency said, adding that a tsunami warning had not been issued.
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The upcoming solar eclipse has raised concerns about potential catastrophic events, including seismic activity and natural disasters.
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The gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon produces the tides, so it makes sense gravity could affect plate tectonics and potentially trigger earthquakes. With the upcoming solar eclipse, the Earth, Sun, and Moon will be all aligned and could potentially have it’s greatest effect.
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If I was living on the west coast, I would be watching what is happening very closely.