5.1 earthquake in Southern Oklahoma City/Norman

[M'Sharak]

Seeing as I pretty much missed yesterday and only suffered broken dishes due to the shaking that apparently took place in my neighborhood, I'm not qualified to comment. Truthfully, I'm bummed that I missed it. The local geologists are saying they believe the increased natural gas production and drilling in Oklahoma for the past two years played a definitive role in the quake yesterday. They reiterated--no known fault line runs under Norman or near Lake Thunderbird, which was the epicenter. No proof as of yet. The Meers fault is nearer to Jones, which has had the rash of tiny tremors for the past 2 years.

Just because no fault had been known previously to be there doesn't necessarily mean there isn't one. Quakes happen on previously-unknown branches of faults quite commonly; it's often how they're discovered in the first place. Looking at the historical seismicity map, though, it appears that the most active area is to the south and west of OKC (Meers fault?) rather than the southeast.

I'm not sure I buy the saltwater-injections explanation, but I'm not overly knowledgeable about that or natural-gas mining. It just seems unlikely that it would be the thing to trigger anything as large as a magnitude 5.1 quake.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I'd take an earthquake over a tornado.

I'd take a placid day at the beach over both.

I've been in a few earthquakes: Italy is a highly seismic region. Not fun.

I'll join you.

 

[Amaris]

I'd take an earthquake over a tornado.

I'd take a placid day at the beach over both.

I've been in a few earthquakes: Italy is a highly seismic region. Not fun.

I'll join you.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Quiet you!

 

[iguana_tonante]

^

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I'm not hearing a no ...

 

[RJDiogenes]

I get a "content encoding error" when I try to access the page. I've never seen that one before.

Odd, it's working for me.

For me as well. You might want to make sure that your browser settings are for UTF-8 encoding and not something strange as a result of visiting a site that changed your settings. (TrekBBS seems to use Western/ISO-8859-1.) If you're using Firefox, click on View in your menu, and hover over Character Encoding when you're on the site. Unicode (UTF-8) should be selected. I'm not sure what the equivalent menu option is for Internet Exploder. (No, that's not a typo - I'm a Web developer, and I loathe IE.)

It's okay now, and I didn't have to change settings. Yesterday it said something about incompatible compressions. I dunno.

That's pretty fascinating. It's like the cliche crack in the ground that you see in cartoon earthquakes. Or the beginning of a horror movie where things start to come up out of the ground....

 

[M'Sharak]

The quake's magnitude was adjusted again to 4.7 and it turns out to have occurred on a previously unknown fault.

The Oklahoma Geological Survey said continued analysis of Wednesday's earthquake data shows the source likely was natural and occurred on a previously unknown fault line.

[...]

The survey also reduced its rating of the earthquake to magnitude 4.7 from the latest Wednesday estimate of 5.1, research seismologist Austin Holland said. Officials had anticipated the reduction based on the stark difference between its rating and the magnitude 4.3 rating given by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Holland said dealing with numerous calls from government officials, the media and state residents also limited the amount of time seismologists had to review the data Wednesday.

The Oklahoma survey and the U.S. survey use different equipment at different locations to measure different data sets, resulting in numbers that can vary from each other and don't mean the same thing, Holland said. The measurement the U.S. survey used for its rating, moment magnitude (Mw), records the low-frequency energy released in the earthquake. The Oklahoma survey rating (mbLg) measures the amplitude of surface waves that people can feel.

"They both provide relative measures of the earthquake," Holland said. "They're just making different assumptions about the earth."

An Oklahoma Geological Survey seismologist also said that the quake's eight-mile depth made it far more likely to be a natural occurrence than one related to the oil and gas industry, but that he would be "continuing to examine this possibility. It will continue to be a part of my research for the foreseeable future."

 

[bigdaddy]

Oh yeah, the Madrid fault will level Memphis if it ever wakes up again. Looks like upper Michigan had a quake of its own. It must have for that to have happened.

It's not if, it's when. They think it happens every 200-250 years and it was 202 years ago I think.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Cripes, M'Sharak, I was hoping it was the saltwater injections into the rock that caused the quake. The idea that a previously undiscovered fault line is underground just a few miles southeast of the metro (ergo, near my house) is unsettling to say the least. I've had it with the weather and everything else. We have baking heat, ice storms, terrorist bombings, the most powerful tornado in recorded history, Christmas eve blizzards and now we have effing earthquakes??? What's next? A comet?

 

[propita]

We have baking heat, ice storms, terrorist bombings, the most powerful tornado in recorded history, Christmas eve blizzards and now we have effing earthquakes??? What's next? A comet?

Anybody else think Dorian should not have asked his/her last question? Too much along the lines of “could be worse, could be raining.”


I’m now expecting a comet--or at least a meteorite--to hit your area. At least you can cash in on that, right, MeteorMan?

 

[RJDiogenes]

That was definitely a "knock on wood" comment.

 

[Crusher Disciple]

Just had a 3.5 in Northern Arkansas.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

ACCCCKKKK!!!!!

 

[Akiraprise]

We have baking heat, ice storms, terrorist bombings, the most powerful tornado in recorded history, Christmas eve blizzards and now we have effing earthquakes??? What's next? A comet?

Anybody else think Dorian should not have asked his/her last question? Too much along the lines of “could be worse, could be raining.”


I’m now expecting a comet--or at least a meteorite--to hit your area. At least you can cash in on that, right, MeteorMan?

2012
Nuff said.

 

[Gaseous Anomaly]

Cripes, M'Sharak, I was hoping it was the saltwater injections into the rock that caused the quake. The idea that a previously undiscovered fault line is underground just a few miles southeast of the metro (ergo, near my house) is unsettling to say the least. I've had it with the weather and everything else. We have baking heat, ice storms, terrorist bombings, the most powerful tornado in recorded history, Christmas eve blizzards and now we have effing earthquakes??? What's next? A comet?

Half baked Bible thumping nut jobs?

 

[M'Sharak]

Just had a 3.5 in Northern Arkansas.

To be fair, they've been having lots of small to moderate quakes lately in that same part of Arkansas and it seems historically to be a fairly active area, seismically, whereas with the newly-discovered fault near Norman, there's probably a reason it went so long without being detected - it's just not a very active fault. Dorian might not see another quake of any significant magnitude there for decades to come.

 

[Crusher Disciple]

Just had a 3.5 in Northern Arkansas.

To be fair, they've been having lots of small to moderate quakes lately in that same part of Arkansas and it seems historically to be a fairly active area, seismically, whereas with the newly-discovered fault near Norman, there's probably a reason it went so long without being detected - it's just not a very active fault. Dorian might not see another quake of any significant magnitude there for decades to come.

Or, she could be shaken out of bed so violently that her sponge curlers fall out and her Chihuahua runs around and pees on the carpet to relieve the stress.

Anything could happen...I'm just sayin'.

 

[M'Sharak]

Or, she could be shaken out of bed so violently that her sponge curlers fall out and her Chihuahua runs around and pees on the carpet to relieve the stress.

Picturesque.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Sponge curlers? And my half pit bull would take a manly dump, thank you.