Seismo Blog Posts Feed

Mystery offshore earthquake and a reprise an hour later in 1992

Mon, 28 May 2012 04:01:00 +0000

While fixing up our earthquake catalog, I spotted a puzzler - a pair of strange repeating quakes in 1992 that are 20 km offshore.

Serious earthquake in Italy

Sun, 20 May 2012 15:57:00 +0000

While not a direct hit on a vulnerable town, M6.1 earthquake in northern Italy is likely to prove expensive.

PNSN catalog near Mount St Helens

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:14:00 +0000

The many seismic incidents recorded by the PNSN show a variety of natural and unnatural activities. Today we show, without much interpretation, the activity since 1980 at and northwest of Mount St Helens .

Slowly unzipping fault seen offshore

Sat, 05 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

A patch of the Gofar transform fault on the East Pacific Rise breaks in a repeatable way, with a distinct and characteristic week-long precursory seismicity pattern. If other faults behave similarly, there could be signs of impending earthquakes.

Earthquake hazards forum at UW on April 25th, 2012 from 4:00-6:30 PM

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:58:00 +0000

Please attend a public forum on Advances in Pacific Northwest Earthquake Hazard Understanding and Earthquake Early Warning, sponsored by the PNSN and CREW. It will be held at the University of Washington in Johnson Hall, Room 102 on April 25th, from 4:00 to 6:30 PM.

Seattle City Council presented with earthquake risk update

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Latest results tweak estimates of seismic risk a variety of ways. New science is redistributing the risk to more specific dangers, and may raise the estimate of danger from the coastal M9. The final new maps will not take effect for several years.

The wech-o-meter takes over all of Cascadia

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Deep non-volcanic tremor monitoring by the PNSN now covers all of Cascadia from north-central California to northern Vancouver Island. After starting monitoring a small region in northern Washington in 2005 the Interactive Tremor Map (wech-o-meter) first expanded into northern Oregon, then with the cooperation of the Canadian Geological Survey into southern Vancouver Island followed by expansion to the California-Oregon border area and just this past month it expanded to the whole subduction zone. Tomorrow the world.

Keystone Cops: Italy prosecutes seismologists for failure to predict deadly quake

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:00:00 +0000

It is a seismologists nightmare. Amid an earthquake swarm, a crank starts to issue predictions, seismologists talk sense, but against all odds, in 2009, a deadly quake strikes L'Aquila. The top scientists are charged with manslaughter, and have been on trial for years.

UFOs in eastern Washington? No, rather UTEs (Unidentified Terrestrial Events)

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:05:00 +0000

Strange bursts of seismic energy were seen this morning on several seismic stations in eastern Washington. When ever similar signals have been seen before, us seismologists often engage in wild speculation with accompanying arm waving, know-it-all pronouncements and shrugs. Since the time intervals of signals on different stations seem to propagate at something like the speed of sound (or higher!) UFOs jump to mind. However, a closer look and recalling such events from the past indicate the source for these is likely not flying but rather on the ground (ie UTEs).

New Sodo Seattle Liquefaction Array Installed

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:00:00 +0000

SODO Seattle is home to a new geotechnical monitoring array: the Seattle Liquefaction Array. The new array will provide scientists and engineers worldwide a new window on a difficult-to-observe but important process of earthquake-shaking-induced ground liquefaction.