Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks. On 18 June, here was a M 7.4 earthquake in the Pacific plate along the Kermadec trench north of New Zealand which generated a small tsunami, even though it was a…
Earthquake Report: Cayman Islands
Contrary to what some people spread around on the internets (some of them major earthquake experts), strike-slip earthquakes can and do generate tsunami (just like this one). More on this below. I am in Portland, Oregon this week, attending the…
Earthquake Report: Puerto Rico!
Welcome to the next decade of the 21st century. We may look back a decade to review the second most deadly earthquake in the 21st century, from the magnitude M 7.0 Haiti Earthquake on 12 Jan 2010. I put together…
Earthquake Report: 2010 Haiti M 7.0
This is the ten year commemoration of the 2010 magnitude 7 earthquake in Haiti that caused widespread damage and casualties, triggered thousands of landslides, caused tsunami, triggered a turbidity current, and caused thousands to be internally displaced. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usp000h60h/executive Here I…
Earthquake Report: Halmahera, Indonesia
Well, yesterday I was preparing some updates to the Ridgecrest Earthquake following my field work with my colleagues at the California Geological Survey (where I work) and the U.S. Geological Survey. We spent the week documenting surface ruptures associated with…
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: 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: 2018 Summary
Here I summarize Earth’s significant seismicity for 2018. I limit this summary to earthquakes with magnitude greater than or equal to M 6.5. I am sure that there is a possibility that your favorite earthquake is not included in this…
Earthquake Report: Bering Kresla / Pacific plate
We just had a large earthquake in the region of the Bering Kresla fracture zone, a strike-slip fault system that coincides with the westernmost portion of the Aleutian trench (which is a subduction zone further to the east). At first,…
Earthquake/Landslide/Tsunami Report: Donggala Earthquake, Central Sulawesi: UPDATE #1
We continue to learn more each day as people collect additional information. Here is my initial Earthquake Report for this M 7.5 Donggala Earthquake. In short, there was an earthquake with magnitude M = 7.5 on 2018.09.28. Minutes after the…