"Any parent of a rambunctious youngster can tell you trouble might be afoot when things go quiet in the playroom. Two independent research initiatives indicate there is a comparable situation with the Cascadia earthquake fault zone."
"The fault zone expected to generate the next big one lies underwater between 40 and 80 miles offshore of the Pacific Northwest coastline. Earthquake scientists have listening posts along the coast from Vancouver Island to Northern California."
"But those onshore seismometers have detected few signs of the grinding and slipping you would expect to see as one tectonic plate dives beneath another, with the exception of the junctions on the north and south ends of what is formally known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone."
Meanwhile, here in California, everything looks normal. What to make of this no one really knows, but it's certainly making the scientists a bit nervous. That's understandable given the catastrophic quakes and tidal waves generated by previous "big ones" on this fault. Time will tell.
"...everything looks normal."
ReplyDeleteScary, huh?
Yeah, that map always looks like that. They say as long as things keep adjusting to the pressure by small quakes, the big one is less likely. That's the worry up in the Pacific Northwest.
DeleteIt can change in a New York minute.
ReplyDeleteI live right on the bay on the central Oregon coast. The tsunami inundation model shows my home within feet of it, 10 miles up the bay. Hopefully after the Cat.9 quake, the house wouldn't have slid down the hill into the bay. Got major preps as a result. Don't come visit.
ReplyDelete