USGS issues Rare Earthquake Warning for Central Oklahoma.

[dieseltech09]

The big one is coming.......

http://news.yahoo.com/rare-earthquake-warning-issued-oklahoma-194211634.html

Mile for mile, there are almost as many earthquakes rattling Oklahoma as California this year. This major increase in seismic shaking led to a rare earthquake warning today (May 5) from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological Survey.

In a joint statement, the agencies said the risk of a damaging earthquake — one larger than magnitude 5.0 — has significantly increased in central Oklahoma.

Geologists don't know when or where the state's next big earthquake will strike, nor will they put a number on the increased risk. "We haven't seen this before in Oklahoma, so we had some concerns about putting a specific number on the chances of it," Robert Williams, a research geophysicist with the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program in Golden, Colorado, told Live Science. "But we know from other cases around the world that if you have an increasing number of small earthquakes, the chances of a larger one will go up." [Watch 2500+ Oklahoma Earthquakes Since 2012 (Video)]

That's why earthquakes of magnitude 5 and larger are more frequent in states such as California and Alaska, where thousands of smaller temblors hit every year.

This is the first time the USGS has issued an earthquake warning for a state east of the Rockies, Williams said. Such seismic hazard assessments are more typically issued for Western states following large quakes, to warn residents of the risk of damaging aftershocks, he said.

The geological agencies took action after the rate of earthquakes in Oklahoma outpaced that of even California for the first few months of 2014. (California regained the lead in April.)

View galleryRare Earthquake Warning Issued for Oklahoma
Oklahoma earthquakes.
"The rate of earthquakes increased dramatically in March and April," Williams said. "That alerted us to examine this further and put out this advisory statement."

While Oklahoma's buildings can withstand light earthquakes, the damage from a magnitude-5 temblor could be widespread. Oklahoma's last major earthquake was in November 2011, when a magnitude-5.6 earthquake centered near Prague, Oklahoma, destroyed 14 homes and injured at least two people.

"Building owners and government officials should have a special concern for older, unreinforced brick structures, which are vulnerable to serious damage during sufficient shaking," Bill Leith, a USGS senior science adviser for earthquakes and geologic hazards, said in the joint statement.

While scientists haven't ruled out natural causes for the increase, many researchers suspect the deep injection wells used for the disposal of fracking wastewater could be causing the earthquake activity. Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, is a method of extracting oil and gas by cracking open underground rock.

Ongoing studies have found a link between Oklahoma's high-volume wastewater injection wells and regions with an uptick in earthquakes.

According to the USGS, the number of quakes magnitude-3 and stronger jumped by 50 percent in the past eight months in Oklahoma. Some 183 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater struck between October 2013 and April 14, 2014. The state's long-term average from 1978 to 2008 was only two earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or larger per year.

If the earthquakes are caused by wastewater injection, then the activity could continue or decrease with future changes in well usage in the state.

"We don't know if this earthquake rate is going to continue," Williams said. "It could go to a higher rate or lower, so the increased chances of a damaging quake could change in the future."

 

[subprep]

my dog has been acting all weird the last week or so. She predicts earthquakes. Don't laugh, I'm serious. She starts sticking to us like freaking velcro and jumps up all startled off the floor, looking around like WTH just happened?!. I think she can either feel or hear things we cannot. I have 3 dogs and she is the only one that acts this way, and every time she starts we have earthquakes of 3 or higher

 

[Spata]

Winter is coming.

 

[Brandi]

I believe it, my cats all go crazy before an earthquake. Growing up I had a pony and before a storm formed she would start acting up and would go into her barn until it was over. One day a tornadic storm was moving towards the area and she wouldn't go near her barn which was very strange. So when the storm did hit she stood out in her pasture while the wind was whipping and the rain was hitting so hard it hurt when it hit you. I went out and tried to get her in the barn but no matter what I did I couldn't get her in her barn. This was the first time in the several years we had her that she acted like that. I couldn't force her, she was too big so I had to leave her to do what she wanted. The next morning when the storm was over, she was standing on the opposite side of the pasture and her barn was destroyed, a small tornado or downdraft had flattened it. After that I started paying a lot more attention to my animals.

 

[Oklahomabassin]

My dog is laying under the shade in a mud puddle I made for him.

 

[carlstretch]

Be afraid,.. be very afraid,... We don't know when,.. we don't know how,.. but you are in grave danger. It could happen any time!!

OMG,.. this kind of article should be criminal. It's a good thing we weren't drilling, fracking and injecting wastewater into wells from 1978 to 2008,... Oh yea,.. we've been doing ALL OF THOSE THINGS since the 1950's.

These things (earthquakes) can come in cycles (recent Oklahoma quakes) or (recent lack of earthquakes in Southern California) or they can just happen in random order. They are far from predictable and we do not have any way of predicting them. I agree that animals can sense them but not because they are psychic,... they can just hear different frequencies that we cannot. I grew up in Pasadena, CA and spent 18 years living with earthquakes from 1971 until 1989. It's amazing to me that it has been almost 15 years since a real earthquake in Los Angeles until this past March,.. when I was actually there with my kids in LA for Spring Break. There has also been oil and gas production in the LA basin since the 1940's,.. and they live over a very actice (active relative to us) fault system. How do you explain that?

I'll be the first to say that while I don't think the injection of water is causing the earthquakes here,... It very well could be but there is no proof of it. You notice that in these articles they never, ever give you any evidence on why they think injection water is causing the faults to be "lubricated."

We (the oil and gas industry) are held by very stringent rules to follow when it comes to water injection. Unless you specifically are injecting produced water for disposal,.. you MUST inject into the same formation that you are producing from. So you get a recycling effect from a waterflood. The vast majority of all produced water is injected like this. Pure disposal wells are by far the minority and even then,... the rules are more stringent than a waterflood injector. Are there wildly illegal operators that use the system and break the laws?? You bet. But that is probably less than 1% of all Oklahoma operators. The OK Corporation Commission runs a tight ship.

Anyway, these articles ruffle my feathers because they just never produce any evidence,. .ever. We're scientists and we like evidence,... Our lives revolve around it. So when another scientist writes an article and produces no evidence,.... it's not good. I earned my Master's degree by researching, gathering and evaluating evidence and I would have been laughed at by my professors and fellow students if I was to present an argument like they have.

It's been a long day at work and I'm going home to a cold beer.. THUNDER UP!!!!

 

[Shadowrider]

Booleshite...

 

[Okie4570]

We've only felt two here, one about 3 month ago, and the big one at the end of the OSU game two or three years ago, about 10:30pm. One lab was sound asleep through the whole thing, the other one was awake, but never blinked.

 

[Old Fart]

What does David Payne on News9 have to say about this report?

 

[Okie4570]

What does David Payne on News9 have to say about this report?

Above ground shelters are best?