The US Geological Survey is reporting a cluster of earthquakes in northern Oklahoma.
The USGS said four earthquakes were recorded around Cherokee and Helena, Oklahoma since late Wednesday. The biggest was a 4.3 magnitude quake centered five miles away from Cherokee at 9:08 a.m. Thursday.
The courthouse in Cherokee reportedly suffered damage as a result of the 4.3 quake.
Amanda Kutz, office manager for the Alfalfa County Sheriff’s Department, said that no one was injured but that plaster is coming off interior walls and that their third floor’s ceiling was damaged.
The USGS says three other quakes between 2.9 and 3.8 have been recorded since Wednesday.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that Humboldt County California was struck by a 5.7 magnitude earthquake Wednesday afternoon.
The quake’s epicenter was underwater about 40 miles southwest of Eureka.
Lt. Wayne Hanson of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office told NBC that no major damage or injuries were reported but that the shaking was significant. The USGS “Did You Feel It” website had multiple reports from coastal areas of Level VI shaking, designed as “strong”.
Ironically, the quake struck as a “room full of Public Safety Officials” were meeting at the California Office of Emergency Services.
The USGS reported measurements from the quake over 200 miles to the north, east and south.
Oklahoma is being shaken with a series of earthquakes including two towns that had significant quakes in back to back days.
Medford, OK received the stronger of the quakes. The U.S. Geological Survey says that a 4.2 magnitude quake struck 13 miles southeast of Medford on Tuesday around 10 a.m. The same area received a 4.3 magnitude earthquake on Monday.
The quakes coincide with two quakes in the town of Perry. According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, a 2.5 magnitude quake hit Perry on Monday followed by a 4.0 magnitude quake around dawn Tuesday morning. (The USGS recorded the quake at 3.8 magnitude.)
An earthquake was also recorded in Helena, OK, at 3.0 magnitude, while a 3.3 magnitude quake was registered near Guthrie.
A positive impact from the quake was that it shook Pleasant Vale Elementary School in Enid, Oklahoma where the students were studying plate tectonics and earthquakes.
The fans of the New England Patriots celebrating their team’s hosting of the AFC Championship Game this weekend weren’t the only thing causing the ground to shake in New England.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that a series of five earthquakes rocked eastern Connecticut area on Monday. The strongest quake, magnitude 3.1, was felt in parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The USGS says that four of the quakes struck in a 20 minute span starting around 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
John Ebel, senior research scientists at the Western Observatory told WCVB-TV the quakes are not as unusual as you would think for that area. He stated there is a tectonic plate from the West Coast to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
He said the quakes are caused by pressure being rleleased from those two boundaries.
Weekend earthquakes shook California and caused rock slides in Idaho.
Two back-to-back quakes struck southern California Saturday night with the strongest a magnitude 4.2 according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That quake was centered around 8 miles north of Castaic, California.
“All of the sudden it was two big rattles and little rumbles afterwards,” Castaic resident Jessica Shickle told NBC Los Angeles. “It was like the Lord literally just took our house and just kind of gave it a couple shakes, and that was it and it went away.”
USGS seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones told NBC the quake was basically small.
“This really is a very small earthquake,” Dr. Jones said. “It’s a size that’s relatively common in Southern California. I did a check and there were eight earthquakes 4.2 and larger in 2014.”
On Sunday, a 4.9 magnitude quake rocked Challis, Idaho and surrounding areas. The quake was followed by aftershocks of 4.0 and 3.6 a few hours later.
The 4.9 quake caused rock slides that blocked roadways but officials say there were no serious injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude 3.9 earthquake struck Tuesday off the coast of San Pedro, California.
The tremor struck around 3:26 p.m.
The epicenter was 16 miles from Long Beach and 14 miles from Rancho Palos Verdes. The quake was reportedly shallow at a depth of 2 miles.
Residents of the area said that the quake felt a lot bigger than the USGS report.
“Felt much stronger than a 3.9,” Chris DuRee, who was near downtown Long Beach, told KTLA-TV. “Rattled softly and then a few strong rolls. No damage anywhere.”
No reports of significant damage or injuries according to local officials.
Los Angeles is one earthquake away from losing a major part of their water supply.
The city of Los Angeles gets almost 90 percent of its water from three major aqueducts. These aqueducts run from the Colorado River, Owens Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
The aqueducts cross the well-known San Andreas Fault a total of 32 times.
This means any major quake along that fault line could end the water supply into the nation’s second largest city.
Mayor Eric Garcetti is calling on city officials to create better plans to protect the city’s water supply.
“[Water is] one of L.A.’s greatest earthquake vulnerabilities,” Garcetti told the L.A. Times. “If it were to take six months to get our water system back … residents and businesses would be forced to relocate for so long that they might never come back.”
Officials are looking to San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission for a possible solution. The SFPUC recently installed a specially designed pipe over a fault line that has “accordion-like joints” that would allow the pipe to flex and move in any direction should the fault line move.
“We’re the first city that’s really bet its life on outside water,” U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told the Times. “We have to cross the faults. There’s no way to not go over the fault.”
“There should be a serious dialogue among the agencies that are responsible for the three sources of water to Southern California,” said Thomas O’Rourke, a Cornell University engineering professor. “Sometimes it’s very difficult to go beyond those institutional barriers…. Somebody just has to take it up.”
An earthquake rattled northern Arizona Sunday night.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported the 4.7 magnitude quake centered 7 miles north of Sedona and was 6 miles deep. While no homes reported damage, the highway department had to clear rocks and debris from highways between Sedona and Flagstaf.
“Business as usual,” said David Brumbaugh, director of the Arizona Earthquake Information Center at Northern Arizona University told azfamily.com. “It’s nothing unusual to have earthquakes in this part of the state. Most of them are too small to be felt.”
The USGS reported over 1,200 people said they felt the quake.
“I think what I heard was the house kind of rattling,” said Donna Kearney Lomeo, a Sedona real estate agent, told azfamily. “It sounded like a bunch of balls rolling around on the roof.”
Smaller aftershocks have been felt in the region.
The Yellowstone volcano rumbled a little more in October than September.
Seismologists with the U.S. Geological Survey say there were a total of 98 earthquakes measured in October, 21 more than in September. However, the scientists said the magnitude of the quakes was lower than the highest ones in the previous month.
The volcano’s alert level remains at “normal.”
The data used by the USGS comes from the University of Utah’s seismograph stations located throughout Yellowstone National Park.
The latest report says that ground deformation in the area is continuing on the same steady path of 5 centimeters per year.
A NASA radar device has found previously unknown Napa Valley fault lines in the wake of the massive 6.0 Napa quake.
The 6.0 quake, which killed one woman and injured 170 people, was the biggest to shake northern California in 25 years. Over 800 homes were damaged and so far 103 are officially too damaged to repair.
As scientists from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey discovered the West Napa Fault moved 18 inches along its 9.3-mile long length, they discovered a series of smaller faults that run parallel to West Napa Fault. The new small faults are believed to let off some of the strain on the region but are likely not significant enough to cause major quakes on their own.
“These really tiny ones are probably not big enough faults to have a significant earthquake, but it’s a good thing to have people go out and check whether they are part of a larger fault system,” said Eric Fielding, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
USGS scientists say that the data is likely going to cause a revision in the quake’s magnitude up a tenth of a point to 6.1 when final data is assimilated.
