Posted by phreakgrrrl on Nov 04, 2002 at 16:18
(66.152.75.5)
Hi,
I'm not a trained geologist by any stretch, but I am fascinated by geology, currently quakes & volcanoes. And even more specifically, caldera volcanoes (aka "super volcanoes").
On 11/03/2002, there seemed, at least to me, a higher-than-average number of quakes going on in the US (AK, CA, WA, WY/MT, even KS). It's the New Moon time too.
My pondering is this: there were five quakes, of the upper 2.X magnitude, around the Yellowstone Caldera, within the space of about two hours. Some were relatively shallow, some were not. At approx. 2115MST, there was another quake, to the NE of the lake within the caldera, of 3.1 magnitude. I'm curious about something.
Why is this 3.1 quake showing up on the nationwide (lower 48) quakes map, yet not on the Utah/Yellowstone (Intermountain west) list of quakes?
If you look at a map of the area, you can see that the earlier five quakes pretty much border the edge of the caldera.
I'm wondering if something MAJOR is up at Yellowstone, and the information has not yet been released to the public. While I was researching all this last night, here in Washington State, at 2102PST, there was also a 3.x quake, and it was posted on the site within minutes of occurance.
Does anyone here know anything going on right now, real time?
A BBC production about super-volcanoes, in February 2000 (or 2001), had a geologist state that all it would take to make the Yellowstone caldera blow its cap is a single, sliding-fault quake... and yet yesterday, there were six quakes, all around the caldera. I don't know if they were sliding-fault quakes though (that's my dilemma, is that I cannot find current information).
Any input and thoughts would be welcomed. I've included some links that I've been using in my online research.
USGS Nat'l Earthquake Info Center:
http://wwwneic.cr.usgs.gov/
UUSS Yellowstone Quake Info:
http://www.seis.utah.edu/
Yellowstone Volcano Observatory:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
the bible's wisdom cougar 07/11 14:56
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