Important Takeaways:
- An undersea volcano off the southeastern coast of the Big Island of Hawaii has been rocked by a swarm of more than 70 earthquakes since the weekend, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
- The largest earthquake has been a magnitude 4.3 event that happened just after noon, local time, on Saturday. Meanwhile, there was a magnitude 4.8 earthquake just 3 miles south of the town of Pahala early Tuesday morning. There have been no reports of injuries in any of the quakes.
- The USGS reports that although earthquake activity declined slightly around midnight, rates of earthquakes remain above background levels on Tuesday.
- Kama‘ehuakanaloa’s peak is about 3,189 feet below sea level, according to the USGS.
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Important Takeaways:
- Underwater volcano off northwestern US could BLOW in weeks – as 300m-long stretch is hit with ‘great swarm’ of earthquakes
- 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.
- Geologists at the University of Washington said the quakes could lead to the Juan de Fuca Ridge erupting within a few weeks or years – but the effects are believed to be mild and not likely impact anyone on land.
- The underwater volcano sits more than 16,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean and about 150 miles off the coast of Washington.
- On March 6, the group’s real-time monitoring network detected the earthquakes, which registered a 4.1 magnitude
- 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.
- The spike indicated a possible ‘impending magmatic rupture,’ the research group reported.
- Officials at ONC have stressed that the effects will be mild and local, and that residents on land are extremely unlikely to feel the quake.
- Nor is it likely to trigger tsunami activity, as a tsunami is set off by a different type of tectonic plate boundary movement: pushing together and slipping, rather than pulling apart.
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