Earthquake in Nepal!

We just had a large earthquake in Nepal! The moment tensor shows that this is a thrust/reverse (originally it was solved as a strike slip) earthquake. I will need to do a little more investigating about this tomorrow. (I am running short on sleep and have an early flight in the morning). Here is the USGS website for this Mw 7.9 earthquake. This is still plotting as a shallow earthquake. Originally it was listed as a 7.5. This is a large earthquake, shallow, and compressional. There will possibly be many injured and many casualties from this earthquake. :-(
Here is the map that I quickly put together. I have placed the moment tensor on the map. I have posted various tutorials about moment tensors on other earthquake posts, so will leave that out on this map.


This map shows the MMI contours with MMI VIII in nearest the epicenter.


Here is the USGS intensity map. The map uses the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale, which is largely based upon the qualitative observations by people just like you and me. The map below is generated using a numerical model to estimate the amount of ground motions from an earthquake given some assumptions about the crust nearby the earthquake (or, rather, the crust for the earthquakes used in the empirical relations used to create the model). These estimates are not direct observations, so the “Did You Feel It” map is better for people to learn about what the real ground motions, or shaking intensity, was for this earthquake.


Here is the current DYFI map, which should be updated over the next day as more people submit their observations to the web site.


This is a measure of how well the model used to create the intensity map above matches the DYFI map.