Tag Archives: earthquake swarm

New Madrid earthquake swarm

Missouri-quake-swarm

Important Takeaways:

  • Sudden Swarm of Quakes near Missouri’s New Madrid Fault
  • After a period of relative quiet, there’s a sudden swarm of quakes that have been recorded along the New Madrid Fault on Missouri’s border.
  • If you pay attention to earthquakes, you likely saw that there were almost no measurable quakes along the New Madrid Fault for days. Now, the USGS is reporting a sudden mini-swarm of a half dozen quakes in the past day alone.
  • I want to be clear that there is no reason for alarm as all of the quakes so far have been relatively tiny with the largest only measuring 2.5 on the Richter Scale.
  • Earthquakes happen along the New Madrid Fault all the time. As we shared recently, there have been more than 175 New Madrid area quakes halfway through 2023 alone. But, we pay attention especially to swarms as experts now estimate a major quake could cause more than a billion dollars in damage which is double what was previously thought. The concern is that a swarm could signal a bigger quake about to happen, but earthquake science is still a field where there’s no way to accurately anticipate or predict a big event. Perhaps someday there will be.

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Earthquake swarm triggers volcano alert on Spain’s La Palma

MADRID (Reuters) – Authorities on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma have warned that a sudden increase in seismic activity could herald a volcanic eruption in the coming days or weeks.

Spain’s National Geographic Institute has detected 4,222 tremors in a so-called “earthquake swarm” in the Cumbre Vieja national park, around the Teneguia volcano in the far south of the island.

As the quakes intensified and moved closer to the surface, the Canary Island’s regional government on Tuesday put the island on a yellow alert for an eruption, the second of a four-level alert system.

It said on Thursday there was no clear evidence for an immediate eruption, though warned the situation could evolve rapidly.

“More intense earthquakes are expected in the coming days,” it said in a statement.

More than 11 million cubic meters (388 million cubic feet)of magma have seeped into Cumbre Vieja in recent days, swelling the peak by around 6 centimeters, the Volcanic Institute of the Canaries said on Thursday.

Rising sharply out of the Atlantic around 100 kilometers to the west of southern Morocco, the Canary Islands are home to Spain’s most active and best known volcanoes, including Teide in Tenerife and Timanfaya in Lanzarote.

Teneguia last erupted in 1971 – the last surface eruption to occur in Spain – while a volcano off the tiny island of El Hierro erupted underwater in 2011.

(Reporting by Nathan Allen and Emma Pinedo, editing by Inti Landauro and Steve Orlofsky)