plate tectonics - Jay Patton online

Earthquake Report: Mendocino triple junction

Well, I was on the road for 1.5 days (work party for the Community Village at the Oregon Country Fair). As I was driving home, there was a magnitude M 5.6 earthquake in coastal northern California. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73201181/executive I didn’t realize…

Earthquake Report: Kermadec Trench

There was just an earthquake associated with the plate boundary that forms the Kermadec Trench, a deep oceanic trench that extends north from New Zealand, towards the Fiji Islands. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000417i/executive A minor tsunami (~25 cm in size) has been recorded…

Earthquake Report: Chile

This morning (my time) there was a magnitude M 6.4 earthquake offshore of Chile. While it was in the correct location to possibly cause a tsunami, the magnitude was too small. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us600040ja/executive The major plate boundary here is the megathrust…

Earthquake Report: San Clemente Island

Well, yesterday was the start of a sequence of earthquakes offshore of San Clemente Island, about 100 km west of San Diego, California. The primary tectonic player in southern CA is the Pacific – North America plate boundary fault, the…

Earthquake Report: Peru

Just a moment ago, there was an intermediate depth Great Earthquake (magnitude M≥8.0) beneath Peru. I was heading to bed at about 1:10 local time (Sacramento, CA) when I noticed a tweet from Dr. Anthony Lomax (presenting his first motion…

Earthquake Report: New Ireland

This region of Earth is one of the most seismically active in the past decade plus. This morning, as I was preparing for work, I got an email notifying me of an earthquake with a magnitude M = 7.5 located…

Earthquake Report: Panamá

There was just now an earthquake beneath Panamá. The major plate boundary in the region is a subduction zone (convergent plate boundary) where the Cocos and Nazca plates dive northwards beneath the Caribbean plate forming the Middle America trench (MAT).…

Earthquake Report: Papua New Guinea

Earlier today, there was an intermediate depth beneath eastern Papua New Guinea (PNG). With a magnitude M = 7.2, this is one of the largest earthquake so far in 2019. Here is the USGS website for this earthquake. Today’s earthquake…

Earthquake Report: Sulawesi, Indonesia

Today I awoke to the USGS earthquake notification service email about an earthquake offshore of Sulawesi, Indonesia. There was an earthquake with a magnitude M 6.8 to the southeast of the Donggala/Palu earthquake from 28 September 2018. Here is the…

18 April 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

Today is the anniversary of the 18 April 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. There are few direct observations (e.g. from seismometers or other instruments) from this earthquake, so our knowledge of how strong the ground shook during the earthquake are limited…

Category: plate tectonics (page 4)