New Earthquakes

Yesterday, at some point like most of the rest of you I had heard about the 8.6 and 8.2 Earthquake centered around Banda Aceh, Indonesia. In 2004 an Earthquake off the same coast took the lives of over 200,000 people in that Pacific region mostly from Tsunamis so the people throughout Indonesia, India and Thailand as well as all surrounding islands were rightly justified in being terrified for some time until the all clear was sounded throughout the region in regard to another large tsunami yesterday. Though there were very small tsunamis  no major damage took place in the area.

Today, since I left my laptop on but closed I opened it up and clicked on the USGS page I had been on. Since it was still set on the yesterday setting, I nonchalantly clicked on View and then reload to load todays earthquake settings. Since it loaded extremely fast I was sort of horrified to see all the "Echo" earthquakes around the "Ring of Fire" especially the 6.9 Earthquake in Mexico near to California. Here is the address so you can paste it for the world at this site:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/

If you then look down the page and click on the North American Site you can see why I was concerned.

There is a 6.5 in Michoacan, Mexico
There is a 6.9 in the Gulf of California
And there is an aftershock of a 4.9 in basically the same place
And there is a 5.9 off the coast of Oregon
And many other new quakes that are the adjustment to
a 70 foot movement of the Earth's crust in Indonesia. It makes more sense too that this would happen because this was a sideways movement of 70 feet rather than a vertical one because a sideways movement would force incredible pressure on all the Pacific plates in the ring of fire which surrounds the Pacific Ocean. So, it was necessary after that for more plates shifting to take up the slack. Likely there might be further little or great adjustments around the ring of Fire in the future because of the 8.6 and 8.2 in Indonesia. After all the 8.6 is the 11th biggest earthquake on earth since 1900. And there has never been a quake known (since 1900) to move the ground 70 feet laterally. So, this is something new for the first time  since 1900 too.

Here are two more pages of quotes and comments about the 8.6 and 8.2 quakes in Indonesia:

• Earth moved 70 feet under 8.6 quake
• 8.6 Earthquake Strikes indonesia

Later in the day: When I was young growing up in Glendale, California, there was a saying about Earthquake weather. The weather is usually dry and warm into the 80s and the wind is blowing at least 20 mph even up to a Santana. I live on the northern Coast of California now so this means we are usually about 10 to 20 degrees colder than southern California but there was the same kind of feeling in the air today when I walked outside that we used to call "Earthquake Weather" when I grew up in Southern California. It gave me an uneasy feeling just like most people who live on the Ring of Fire are feeling today too.  Maybe in the Center of the U.S. where there are tornadoes there is weather that makes them feel uneasy too just before a tornado strikes.

Still later in the day: I was pretty happy when it started to rain with the next storm moving north and taking us out of "Earthquake weather" once again. I think everyone is glad there have been no more really big earthquakes as each day that passes after a big one or ones, the less chance of another big one happening (at least in the first month or so).