Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Oklahoma earthquakes are resting


Phew.  I'm in a sad mood anyway, since my new 4 month old puppy suddenly died.  She had a minor cold, under vet care, and then it all turned nasty within an hour, like Ebola, with blood out the lungs.  Probably there was a defect with the lungs.  But we'll look again.  I like to think we have the spirit of an active dog, and it just comes in various shapes and sizes.  :)  Still, a bad run of luck for me.

Only two events Tuesday.  But the fluids continue to pour into the major structures.  As a recap, this area is under very high horizontal stress, chiefly in the NE direction.  The area is in equilibrium with the faults, set that way by successive glaciation.  Water has three effects:  lubrication once moving, jacking apart the faults (effective stress), and stress corrosion on the silica grains.  When all three come into play we have an earthquake.  The small quakes set up the big ones according to fractal roughness.  The same probability exists for having constant M3's, as for having a sudden M7 (in other words very rare).


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