Tag Archives: Earthquake

Tremors in U.S. Northeast caused by sonic boom, not quake: USGS

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Residents from New Jersey to Connecticut reported feeling earthquake-like shaking on Thursday afternoon, but U.S. seismologists said the vibrations were likely the result of a series of sonic booms.

The U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors earthquake activity, said no quake had struck. The agency reported at least nine sonic booms had been recorded over 90 minutes starting at 1:24 p.m. near Hammonton, New Jersey, about 35 miles southeast of Philadelphia.

On Twitter, users said they felt several tremors, particularly in southern New Jersey.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the sonic booms, which are generated by airplanes traveling in the air faster than the speed of sound.

Some news reports suggested that military aircraft from McGuire Air Force Base, approximately 35 miles north of Hammonton, were the likely source.

But the McGuire base said on Twitter that its training ranges were clear on Thursday and that none of its aircraft are capable of creating sonic booms. In a subsequent post, the base said it was working with local authorities to determine a cause.

Seismologists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York also confirmed that no earthquake had occurred in the region and that they had measured vibrations and low-frequency sound waves consistent with about eight sonic booms from approximately 1:20 p.m. to 2:40 p.m.

Won-Young Kim, a research professor at the observatory, said residents on the ground likely would not have heard the booms but would have experienced 15 to 20 seconds of shaking during each one.

The tremors produced numerous emergency calls to local police departments, some of which took to Twitter to ask residents not to flood their emergency lines with any more reports.

No damage was immediately reported.

Some Twitter users offered a lighthearted response. One person using the handle @VixenRogue quipped: “Aliens are invading New Jersey. What’s the best way to let them know the other 49 states are just fine with this?”

The reports came two days after residents in Charleston, South Carolina, said they felt tremors. The shaking was likely caused by sonic booms from F-18 fighter jets on a training run from a nearby military base, according to media reports.

Sonic booms are often mistaken for seismic activity, according to the USGS website.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew Hay and Sandra Maler)

California Rattled By Heavy Rains, Snow, Earthquake

Large portions of California were bracing for more heavy rain and snow Wednesday as El Niño pushed powerful storms toward the state, threatening to cause flash flooding and other damage.

The National Weather Service issued numerous flash flood watches along the California coastline and also issued winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories for areas in higher elevations. The service’s office in San Diego also warned of a chance for mudslides, particularly in areas where recent wildfires burned.

National Weather Service forecasts called for 2 to 4 inches of rain to fall across Southern California on Wednesday, accompanied by peak wind gusts of up to 60 mph that could be strong enough to topple trees and power lines. The rain comes a day after 1.42 inches fell at Los Angeles International Airport, smashing a daily rainfall record that stood for more than 36 years. Other parts of California received more than 3 inches of rain, National Weather Service data indicated.

The National Weather Service was calling for 5 to 10 inches of snow in higher elevations on Wednesday, but said mountain peaks could see 18 inches. Near-blizzard conditions were expected in some places. More storms were expected to drop additional precipitation tonight and Thursday.

Meanwhile, the United States Geological Survey reported a magnitude 4.5 earthquake occurred just outside of Banning, California, at 6:42 a.m. local time. The California Highway Patrol’s website indicated it received reports of small rocks and mud across state Route 243 a few minutes after the earthquake, though it wasn’t clear if the earthquake triggered the landslide.

Banning is located about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.

The National Weather Service also issued a flash flood warning for parts of Ventura County, just northwest of Los Angeles, cautioning that heavy rain could cause mud and debris to slide across busy Highway 101.

The storms were being blamed on El Niño, a weather pattern known for producing atypical and extreme weather throughout the world. It occurs when part of the Pacific Ocean is warmer than usual, which sets off a ripple effect that has a wide-reaching result. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said that the United States is expected to see the effects of this El Niño over the next three months as one of the strongest instances of the phenomenon on record may sway temperatures and precipitation totals across significant portions of the nation.

Los Angeles opened up several shelters to help the city’s homeless population weather the storms.

U.S., experts cast doubt on North Korea’s H-bomb claim

By Ju-min Park and Mark Hosenball

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea said it successfully tested a powerful nuclear bomb on Wednesday, drawing criticism from world powers even though experts and the U.S. government doubt that the isolated nation’s atomic weapons capability is as advanced as Pyongyang claims.

It was the fourth time that North Korea has exploded a nuclear device. It unnerved neighbors South Korea and Japan and prompted an emergency meeting on Wednesday of the U.N. Security Council in New York.

While a nuclear test had long been expected, North Korea’s assertion that it exploded a hydrogen device, much more powerful than an atomic bomb, came as a surprise. The White House said North Korea might not in fact have tested a hydrogen bomb.

The explosion caused an earthquake that was measured by the United States Geological Survey.

Pyongyang also said it was capable of miniaturizing, allowing a nuclear device to be adapted as a weapon and placed on a missile, potentially posing a new threat to the United States and its allies in Asia.

“Let the world look up to the strong, self-reliant nuclear-armed state,” leader Kim Jong Un wrote in what North Korean state TV displayed as a handwritten note.

While the Kim government boasts of its military might to project strength globally, it also plays up the need to defend itself from external threats as a way to maintain control domestically.

The test drew world criticism, including from China and Russia. China, the major trade partner of North Korea, said it will lodge a protest with Pyongyang.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said any nuclear test would be a “flagrant violation” of U.N. Security Council resolutions. “The initial analysis is not consistent with the claim the regime has made of a successful hydrogen bomb test,” he told reporters.

Conventional atomic bombs split atoms from heavier elements such as uranium or plutonium. They occur in one stage. The process is called fission. Hydrogen bombs have a second stage after fission. This fusion stage releases much more energy.

North Korea has been under U.N. Security Council sanctions since it first tested an atomic device in 2006 and could face additional measures.

The Security Council said it would begin working immediately on significant new measures in response to North Korea, a threat diplomats said could mean an expansion of U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang.

It likely will take several days to determine more precisely what kind of nuclear device Pyongyang set off as a variety of sensors, including “sniffer planes,” collect evidence.

South Korean intelligence officials and several analysts also questioned whether Wednesday’s explosion was a test of a full-fledged hydrogen device, pointing to its having been roughly as powerful as North Korea’s last atomic test in 2013.

Stocks across the world fell for a fifth consecutive day as the North Korea tension added to a growing list of geopolitical worries and China fueled fears about its economy by allowing the yuan to weaken further.

No countries were given advance warning of a nuclear test, South Korea’s intelligence service said, according to lawmakers briefed by intelligence officials.

In previous such tests, Pyongyang had notified China, Russia and the United States beforehand, they said.

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

North Korea became a topic on the U.S. presidential campaign with the first state nominating contests weeks away and the election in November.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton condemned the test as a “provocative and dangerous act” that the United States should meet with sanctions and strengthened missile defenses.

“North Korea must have no doubt that we will take whatever steps are necessary to defend ourselves and our treaty allies, South Korea and Japan,” she said in a statement.

Republican candidate Donald Trump said the onus was on China to solve what he called the North Korean “problem”, and if it did not, the United States “should make trade very difficult for China.”

North Korea has long coveted diplomatic recognition from Washington, but sees its nuclear deterrent as crucial to ensuring the survival of its third-generation dictatorship.

The North’s state news agency said Pyongyang would act as a responsible nuclear state and vowed not to use its nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty was infringed.

Michael Madden, an expert on North Korea’s secretive leadership, said, “With Iran being off the table, the North Koreans have placed themselves at the top of the foreign policy agenda as far as nation-states who present a threat to the U.S.”

DOUBTS RAISED

The device had a yield of about 6 kilo tonnes, according to the office of a South Korean lawmaker on the parliamentary intelligence committee – roughly the same size as the North’s last test, which was equivalent to 6-7 kilo tonnes of TNT.

“Given the scale, it is hard to believe this is a real hydrogen bomb,” said Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum.

Joe Cirincione, a nuclear expert who is president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security organization, said North Korea may have mixed a hydrogen isotope in a normal atomic fission bomb.

“Because it is, in fact, hydrogen, they could claim it is a hydrogen bomb,” he said. “But it is not a true fusion bomb capable of the massive multi-megaton yields these bombs produce”.

The USGS reported a 5.1 magnitude quake that South Korea said was 49 km (30 miles) from the Punggye-ri site where the North has conducted nuclear tests in the past.

The North’s previous claims of miniaturization have not been independently verified. Many experts also doubt whether the North possesses missile technology capable of reliably delivering a warhead to the continental United States.

(Additional reporting by Meeyoung Cho, Ju-min Park, James Pearson, Se; Young Lee, Christine Kim, Jee Heun Kahng, Jack Kim in Seoul,; Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations, Ayesha Rascoe and in; Washington, Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing and Takashi Umekawa in; Tokyo; Writing by Tony Munroe and Alistair Bell; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Mike Collett-White and Howard Goller)

Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake Leads to Death, Destruction in India, Bangladesh

An early-morning earthquake rattled India and the neighboring countries of Bangladesh and Myanmar on Monday, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The USGS reported the magnitude 6.7 quake was first felt at 4:35 a.m. local time on Monday. It was centered about 18 miles west of Impahl, the capital of the Indian province of Manipur.

The quake caused the deaths of at least 11 people in India and Bangladesh, Reuters reported, and injured approximately 190 more. According to Reuters, the earthquake knocked down portions of buildings in Impahl, while shaking was felt in a Myanmar city about 730 miles away.

The USGS said the region is known for seismic activity, and 19 magnitude 6.0-plus earthquakes have occurred within a 150-mile radius of Monday’s ground-shaker within the past 100 years. Most of the people in the region live in buildings prone to earthquake damage, the USGS said.

Reuters reported the latest quake knocked out power and phone lines, complicating rescue efforts.

Earthquakes Rattle Southern California, British Columbia

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake during rush hour on Tuesday evening triggered multiple aftershocks in southern California, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The initial quake occurred at 5:48 p.m. local time about 2.5 miles outside of Devore, California, a small community in San Bernardino County. Three aftershocks followed within 30 minutes, the USGS reported, and a fifth earthquake occurred at 6:14 a.m. local time on Wednesday.

According to the USGS, the initial quake was widely felt throughout the greater Los Angeles area though there were no reports of significant damage. The aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from 2.7 to 3.8, were not as widely felt, though they still caused some light shaking in the Devore area.

San Bernardino is located about 12 miles southeast of Devore. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan wrote on his Twitter page that no damage or injuries had been reported to the department, though the earthquake did set off several alarms. Police were responding to those.

Meanwhile, the USGS also indicated that a magnitude 4.8 earthquake occurred about 11 miles outside of Victoria, British Columbia, late Tuesday night. There were no significant aftershocks.

The quake, which occurred at 11:39 p.m., caused light-to-moderate shaking in parts of Canada and throughout northwest Washington, the USGS said. There were no reports of heavy damage.

Victoria is located on an island off the Canadian mainland. While the earthquake did occur in a coastal area, The National Tsunami Warning Center said there was not any threat of a tsunami.

Earthquakes Cause Minor Damage, Knock Out Power in Oklahoma

Early-morning earthquakes caused some damage in one Oklahoma community on Tuesday.

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a magnitude 4.3 earthquake occurred at 5:39 a.m. local time about five miles outside of Edmond, Oklahoma, one of the state’s most populous cities. A magnitude 3.4 aftershock followed nearby exactly 10 minutes later.

Edmond is located about 15 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

The earthquakes caused about 4,400 customers in Edmond to lose power, officials wrote on the city’s Twitter page. However, crews restored service to every customer within about 90 minutes.

One Edmond resident shared a picture on Twitter showing a broken mirror inside a bathroom, though there weren’t published reports indicating the quake caused severe damage or injuries.

Another magnitude 2.9 earthquake shook the ground 17 miles outside of Fairview, Oklahoma, at 6:48 a.m., according to the USGS. Fairview is roughly 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

The three earthquakes were the latest to hit the state of Oklahoma, which has seen a dramatic rise in seismic activity since 2009, according to the USGS. Wastewater from the oil and gas companies who operate in the state have been linked to the uptick, and officials at the regulatory Oklahoma Corporation Commission have implemented steps to reduce wastewater production.

However, the earthquakes continue.

USGS data indicates Oklahoma has experienced about 123 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in the past 30 days. That includes dozens of quakes of at least magnitude 3.0. Before 2009, the USGS says the state traditionally only saw one to three magnitude 3.0 quakes a year.

Tuesday’s earthquakes came at a time when Oklahoma was still reeling from a powerful storm that brought ice, snow and flooding to the state, which the state Department of Health said led to at least 50 people suffering injuries. The entire state remains under a state of emergency, and the National Weather Service issued flood and flash flood warnings across eastern Oklahoma.

Close to 200,000 customers across Oklahoma lacked power on Monday afternoon, Governor Mary Fallin’s office said in a news release announcing the state of emergency. However, utility companies said their crews were busy restoring power to those who had been left in the dark.

The Public Service Company of Oklahoma reported about 17,000 customers were without power on Tuesday morning. Another utility company, OG&E, reported it had restored service to about 60,000 of its customers, though about 19,000 were experiencing outages. The Oklahoma Electric Cooperative reported approximately 54,000 people near Oklahoma City lacked power.

Magnitude 7.2 Earthquake Strikes in Tajikistan, Aftershocks Follow

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake occurred in a remote area of Tajikistan on Monday.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported the quake occurred about 68 miles west of Murghob at about 12:50 p.m. local time. Several aftershocks occurred nearby, USGS data show.

NBC News reported buildings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India shook as a result of the quake.

There were not any immediate reports of deaths, injuries or damage.

The earthquake occurred 18 miles underground near Sarez Lake in the Pamir Mountain range.

According to the USGS, earthquakes in that part of Tajikistan seldom lead to shaking-related deaths because the region is so remote. But they have sometimes triggered fatal mudslides.

The USGS website shows that eight other quakes of magnitude 4.5 or greater occurred in or near Tajikistan on Monday.

There were magnitude 4.8 and 4.6 aftershocks near Sarez Lake within three hours of the initial earthquake, according to USGS data.

There was also a cluster of four earthquakes further northeast closer to the city of Karakul. They ranged in magnitude from 4.8 to 5.4, the data show.

Further northeast, on the other side of Karakul, the data show there were magnitude 4.5 and 4.6 quakes near Tajikistan’s border with China.

Scientists Track Fukushima Radiation off Pacific Coast

Scientists who are studying the impacts of a nuclear power plant accident in Japan have discovered radiation is spreading to more sites off the Pacific Coast of the United States.

But the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reported Thursday that even a sample with the highest-documented radiation level to date is still far below a threshold that should cause alarm.

The institute has been tracking the spread of radiation from the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima power plant, in which an earthquake set off a tsunami that struck the plant and caused three meltdowns. That event released some radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean.

Ken Bruessler, the director of the institute’s Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity, is part of a research team that’s monitoring the ocean for traces of that radioactive material. Over the past four years, they’ve observed small amounts of material, cesium-134, off the coast of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California.

The team recently found its most contaminated sample to date — 11 becquerals per cubic meter of ocean water, according to a news release. A becqueral is a unit used to measure radioactivity, and this sample was 50 percent higher than any other that’s ever been found off the West Coast.

Even at its highest figure yet, scientists say the sample is still more than 500 times lower than government standards for safe drinking water. It’s also OK for recreational activities like swimming, and Bruessler said in the news release that it’s also below safety limits for sea life.

Contamination levels are higher near Fukushima.

While Bruessler said in the news release that contamination levels near Japan “are thousands of times lower” than they were following the 2011 accident, recent samples collected there contain 10 to 100 times more radioactive material than those collected off the Pacific Coast. He said that indicates that the plant is still releasing radioactive material, though how much remains unclear.

The scientists also note that virtually any sample of Pacific Ocean water will have some level of radioactive material, as atomic weapons testing was performed there in parts of three decades.

Scientists say they know the contamination they’re measuring is from Fukushima and not left over from atomic bomb detonations because the specific type of radioactive material is different.

Four earthquakes strike Oklahoma, including another 4.7

Four more earthquakes struck Oklahoma on Monday, including one of magnitude 4.7.

That’s according to the United States Geological Survey’s earthquake data.

The magnitude 4.7 earthquake came at 3:49 a.m. Central Time, the USGS said. It was about five kilometers below the earth’s surface and was centered near Medford, close to the Kansas border.

The Associated Press said there were no immediate accounts of damage, but KWTV News 9 reported the quake was felt across Oklahoma and it shook some of the state’s residents awake.

The Tulsa World reported this morning’s earthquake tied for the largest one in the state since 2011. It was matched only by a magnitude 4.7 earthquake located near Cherokee on Nov. 19.

A trio of smaller earthquakes followed.

A magnitude 3.0 quake occurred at 5:50 a.m. near Edmond, according to the USGS. An hour later, there were magnitude 3.1 and 2.7 earthquakes within 40 minutes of each other near Perry.

More than 5,000 earthquakes have already been recorded in Oklahoma this year, according to NPR. The oil and gas industries in Oklahoma produce a lot of wastewater, which the USGS has linked to the rise in earthquakes. State officials have introduced measures to limit wastewater.

Oklahoma is a key component of the energy scene in the United States.

It houses what an NPR report called North America’s largest commercial crude oil storage center, holding approximately 54 million barrels of oil in tanks the size of airplane hangars.

The facility is located in Cushing. While an official told NPR that the Oklahoma quakes have not caused any issues yet, the tanks weren’t constructed with any kind of major earthquake in mind.

That’s because the swarm in earthquakes is a recent phenomenon.

The number of earthquakes began to trend upward in 2009, and a USGS report found a 50 percent increase in the state’s earthquake rate from October 2013 to its May 2014 publication.

The report also said that raised the odds that a magnitude 5.5 quake would hit Oklahoma. A magnitude 5.6 quake hit Prague in November 2011, which is the state’s biggest quake on record.

A USGS research geophysicist told NPR he’s spoken to the Department of Homeland Security about the Cushing oil tanks. NPR also reported that officials fear that any earthquake damage to the Cushing facility could have significant implications in the United States energy market.

Peru and Brazil rocked by two 7.6 earthquakes

On Tuesday, in a remote, sparsely populated jungle region near the borders of Peru, Brazil and Bolivia, a deep, powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook intensely followed by another 7.6 magnitude quake five minutes later and just miles away.

The United States Geological Survey says that the latter earthquake was almost certainly triggered by the earlier event. Seismologists sometimes refer to a pair of similarly sized earthquakes that occur at nearly the same time and location as an earthquake “doublet.”

According to AccuWeather reports, the quake occurred 107 miles west-northwest of Iberia, Peru, and 423 miles east-northeast of the capital of Lima. The second quake was centered 130 miles south of Tarauaca, Brazil.

Because of the depth of these quakes at 373.2 miles and 380.1 miles, respectively, no tsunami watches or warnings were issued.

The area of these quakes are inhabited by fewer than 1,000 people. No reports of injuries are damage have been reported at this time.