Mag 6.6 earthquake near Christchurch

[gary]

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake occurred 15 km SE of Hanmer Springs, near Chistchurch, New Zealand at Mon Nov 14 2016 12:02 AM (NZDT).

http://www.google.org/publicalerts/a...=AU&source=web

https://www.rt.com/news/366772-zeala...damage-threat/

[noeyedeer (Matt)]

can we blame the moon?
hope everyone is OK and no major tsunamis
matt

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

I'm reading the quake measured 7.8.
With a 2 metre tsunami

[N1 (Mirko)]

http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/felt/severe
http://www.civildefence.govt.nz/

Strongest event in a while. Thinking of those affected.

[Wavytone]

Originally Posted by noeyedeer

can we blame the moon?

Yes you can - there is a correlation between major earthquakes and new/full moon, because it raises tides in the earths crust (about 2cm) that increase stress levels in the rock. Maximum tide (and max stress) occur on the same dates we have king tides in the sea.

Good reason to live in a wooden house, if you're in NZ - and have a very strong dining table to hide under.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Heck of a lot of infrastructure damage reported. Road & rail heavily affected by slips and subsidence's. Lot of house and building damage in Wellington, cracks and windows plus more road and wharves affected. A lot of small communities cut off, housing damage and some injury but only the two deaths reported. Major power & communications outages as well.
Auckland is unaffected, top half of the North Island down to about Palmerston North seems to have escaped.

Moon ? Could be ..... if so maybe more tonight will happen. Currently there are quite major aftershocks, 3-4, every couple of minutes.

[gary]

Originally Posted by geonet.org.nz

M7.5 Kaikoura Quake: What we know so far

This earthquake was the largest recorded in New Zealand since the M7.8 Dusky Sound earthquake in 2009. But, given its location, it was more widely felt and more damaging. This earthquake unsettled many people and that is perfectly normal; earthquakes can be upsetting events. The best advice we have is to be prepared for earthquakes.

We can say one thing with certainty: there will be more earthquakes to come in this area.

Two earthquakes, not one

It looks like we’ve got two separate but related quakes going on. Our reports indicate that the combination of these two quakes lasted two minutes, with the most severe shaking at around 50 seconds. It was widely felt throughout both the North and South Islands. It looks like one was a strike-slip and the other was a thrust fault.

Further, we have received many aftershocks since the start of the quake. We are currently working to assess each of these but it may take some time.

Originally Posted by geonet.org.nz

A word about other theories

We understand that a “super moon” is going to happen tomorrow night. However, we only report on information and correlations that can be verified through our instruments and backed up by our friends at the USGS.

Link here -
http://info.geonet.org.nz/display/qu...we+know+so+far

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Yeah, I have already seen the "Super Moon" blamed for it. No mention of the fact that A, it was not the full moon yet and B, neither was it at perigee yet, both of which would combine to have the distance to the moon greater than it would have been at the last "Super" moon (Which was in fact last full moon)

I can not believe I have written that loathsome astrologers buzzphrase so often in half an hour. It would not bother me anywhere near as much if I did not know people who are truly terrified that disaster is going to befall the planet on every one. I had to point out that the last one was last month and they did not predict before or later try to correlate it with any disasters as the media did not make any fuss about it which meant they did not know about it.

On topic, my sympathies to all in NZ as the cleanup begins.

[PeterM]

When my wife and I were in NZ in 2013 I found this site interesting. Note the severe 6.3 mag Earthquake just 2 hours ago (search by severity) in same area as last nights. No doubt will go on for some time.http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/felt
The drive through that mountainous area along the coast was spectacular, lots of fur seals, a lot of rebuilding on that highway and railway ahead. Hope there is nobody buried under there.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

No further deaths been noted. They found the missing 12(?) White water rafters and the 6 kayakers on the Clarence River. Also the truck driver and the loco driver.
Some ratbags robbed some houses while families evacuated, they'll be found eventually and dealt with. These guys forget we're on two small islands so there is nowhere to really run.

On a lighter note a couple of kiwis are feeding 1200 stranded tourists in Kaikoura . They went out a killed a couple of pigs and set up a spit roast. There will be beer and guitars after, you can bet on it.

[Stonius (Markus)]

Originally Posted by The_bluester

Yeah, I have already seen the "Super Moon" blamed for it. No mention of the fact that A, it was not the full moon yet and B, neither was it at perigee yet, both of which would combine to have the distance to the moon greater than it would have been at the last "Super" moon (Which was in fact last full moon)

I'd be interested to know just how much greater / less the force is on the earth's crust, because the basic proposition that there is more risk of earthquakes when there are greater forces involved makes sense to me. Yet, I'm told it is not so, so I'm missing something.

Has anyone done the calculations to see how much difference in force there is between the maximum and minimum case scenario (Both earth and moon at perigee + new moon, V's both at apogee and moon at, what? would first quarter or full moon exert less force?).

Markus

[The_bluester (Paul)]

I have no doubt that there is a difference in forces, however, a quick bit of googling turned up the distances of tomorrow mornings perigee versus last months totally unremarked perigee full moon and the difference is around half of one percent. About 2000KM in a couple of hundred thousand KM. IN fact the moon would have been further from Earth when the quake happened than at last months perigee.

The last time the media really got whipped up about it, this group of people were certain of major quakes, volcanic eruptions, king tides that might qualify as tsunami, flooding rivers, the whole box and dice. The problem is if you go hunting for it you can find SOMETHING, somewhere to correlate with a cosmic event and imply causation because you can generally find something that has happened somewhere on earth corresponding to any given instance of your "Insert cosmic event here" to say "This happens every time"

[Wavytone]

There's a graph somewhere that shows the moon phase (days) on the x axis va earthquakes by magnitude (y axis). It's not linear and does show a correlation for new and full moon.

To the extent that of travelling to Japan, NZ or west coast USA I'd avoid these dates if possible. As for the solar eclipse next year ... yep it's a possible date for the Cascadia or San Andreas faults to slip. And both are overdue.

[Wavytone]

There's a graph somewhere that shows the moon phase (days) on the x axis va earthquakes by magnitude (y axis). It's not linear and does show a correlation for new and full moon

Alternatively you can find the dates for recent big quakes and check the lunar phase yourself. There's a very good chance of it being a day or two either side of new/full.

To the extent that of travelling to Japan, NZ or west coast USA I'd avoid these dates if possible. As for the solar eclipse next year ... yep it's a possible date for the Cascadia or San Andreas faults to slip. And both are overdue.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Many years ago I worked for a company that built amongst other things, a tiltmeter. An extremely sensitive instrument that could measure tilt in microdecimal points of arc seconds of movement. As a test it was placed in the naval bases Devonport ( Auckland ) Tunnel under the headland, a superquiet and isolated sealed room about 100 meters underground.
The instrument was able to measure the rise and fall of the entire headland due to the tidal movements into the Waitemata Harbour. Our simple test back at the lab was to place it in the middle of a 6 x 6 meter slab of thick reinforced concrete floor in the lab and place a foot gently on one corner. It was designed to detect ground swelling on the sides of volcanoes and pre-earthquake movements.

So my point is, it may not be the moon directly having an effect on seismic events but the added weight of more water over a region already under stress from other forces. How much extra weight is there on say 50mm of extra tide height over several thousand square kilometres .. ?
And I've seen king tides that exceed normal tides by a meter or more ..

There is now a few new reefs down the eastern coastline off Kaikoura that were not present previously. Upthrusted sea floor, which was the cause of the Tsunami and is now a new shallow area to be charted...

Back to the tiltmeter, a funny story.
One was built for the University of California and was transhipped via Hawaii. The University of Hawaii asked if they could borrow it to try it out on the sides of the big one over there ( Mauna Loa ?). Anyway they swore it would be ok and safe and placed it in a concrete bunker. It detected swell and an eruption occurred, Thye asked to extend the test and again it detected swell and an eruption occurred. Then the signal cut out. No problem they said, the lava flow has obviously chopped off the data cabling to the bunker (this is well before mobile phone\data days) and even if it has surrounded the bunker and trapped it we can just dig it out. After all it was in a thick concrete bunker with a steel door.

Only problem was the steel door had a wooden frame .....and Hawaii had not thought to insure the device.

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

There's a graph somewhere that shows the moon phase (days) on the x axis va earthquakes by magnitude (y axis). It's not linear and does show a correlation for new and full moon

Alternatively you can find the dates for recent big quakes and check the lunar phase yourself. There's a very good chance of it being a day or two either side of new/full.

To the extent that of travelling to Japan, NZ or west coast USA I'd avoid these dates if possible. As for the solar eclipse next year ... yep it's a possible date for the Cascadia or San Andreas faults to slip. And both are overdue.

I don't argue that the moon kneading the earth's insides is not a cause for quakes. I do however argue that the "Super moon" is not a cause for terror when compared to every other full moon.

And that is what the crackpots I now spend as little time as possible discussing this stuff with do think. They quite literally blame it for yesterdays quake (Despite it neither being full nor at perigee at the time) and can trot out a list of other calamities that they blame on historical perigee full moons. The list being made more exhaustive by including things for about a week either side of the full moon. And some of them are "Chemtrail" adherents too.

[tim.anderson (Tim Anderson)]

Originally Posted by The_bluester

I don't argue that the moon kneading the earth's insides is not a cause for quakes. I do however argue that the "Super moon" is not a cause for terror when compared to every other full moon.

And that is what the crackpots I now spend as little time as possible discussing this stuff with do think. They quite literally blame it for yesterdays quake (Despite it neither being full nor at perigee at the time) and can trot out a list of other calamities that they blame on historical perigee full moons. The list being made more exhaustive by including things for about a week either side of the full moon. And some of them are "Chemtrail" adherents too.

Apparently there is also a correlation between seismic activity and the number of newspaper reports of lost pets in San Francisco. Lost moggies tramping over the San Andreas, presumably.