Patterico's Pontifications

5/30/2014

Earthquake!!!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:00 pm



Pretty quick, and relatively mild. Still.

UPDATE: Preliminary report: magnitude 3.8, 10.5 miles southwest of San Pedro (and me).

27 Responses to “Earthquake!!!”

  1. We’re fine. Really.

    Patterico (9c670f) — 5/30/2014 @ 8:02 pm

  2. Well, you know…. You’ll just be sitting there – minding your own business, and they’ll come marching in, crawl up your leg, and start biting the inside of your ass, and you’ll be all like, “Hey. Get out of my ass you stupid earthquakes.”

    happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/30/2014 @ 8:12 pm

  3. Huh, thought that was the Kings scoring the tying goal.

    JVW (feb406) — 5/30/2014 @ 8:19 pm

  4. I think they’ll be coming back to Chicago for game 7, JVW.

    elissa (0c58c5) — 5/30/2014 @ 8:33 pm

  5. No doubt due to fracking, Pat. We all know how big the state of Kali is on developing its energy resources.

    Steve57 (61329d) — 5/30/2014 @ 9:04 pm

  6. Any where else in the US, and people go into a white-knuckled panic, hands waving high in the air, running aimlessly, screaming gibberish in abject horror. Here in SoCal, we feel a bit of movement, stop for a second at our desk or workbench to take it all in, then mutter to ourselves “hmmm. must be an earthquake”, and then get back to work.

    I was working at Shelby in Whittier when an earthquake struck. We had cars on lifts, doing the various assembly procedures. Those of us who knew, we just stepped out from under the cars, waited for the shaking to stop (the lifts were swaying a fair amount), then went back to work. One welder who was from New York wasn’t so calm. It took us several minutes to calm him down and reassure him everything was OK. Perhaps 15 minutes later, another aftershock. Same drill for the SoCal people. The New Yorker? I never saw him again. I watched with some bemusement as he ran down the assembly line, running leap off the loading platform, and down the street. Last I heard the poor bugger packed up that same day and went back to New York.

    I forget how big the shot was we took that day, but I don’t think it was any bigger than the one in San Pedro, probably smaller.

    Bill H (f9e4cd) — 5/31/2014 @ 12:28 am

  7. One thing I will say without snark is I really do think we have the best building standards here in SoCal. Anywhere else and Northridge would have been one hell of a lot more destructive and deadly.

    Bill H (f9e4cd) — 5/31/2014 @ 12:32 am

  8. …and relatively mild.

    For us natives of this stupid place, 3.8 is crap.

    A 6 is when things start to get interesting.

    Blacque Jacques Shellacque (d3cdd0) — 5/31/2014 @ 2:07 am

  9. it is to laugh… Resident Evil was looking in the WSJ this evening, and pointed out an article about a couple who bought an old building down in ‘Bama or some such, and refurbed the warehouse into a home…

    we laughed, and the conversation morphed into the ongoing intermitent discussion of “if/when we bail of #Failifornia”: i said that, if we wound up with a brick home back there, the first thing we were going to do was a SoCal guake retrofit, so that, when the New Madrid cuts loose, we would be the only house left standing in the neighborhood…

    then i find this thread. 🙂

    redc1c4 (abd49e) — 5/31/2014 @ 2:11 am

  10. You had a duskquake. And the big one’s coming. You have been warned.

    http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2014/05/29/author-says-earthquakes-are-predictable/

    elissa (ee6233) — 5/31/2014 @ 9:51 am

  11. Bring it on, Gaia! I’ll be looking at beachfront property.

    Colonel Haiku (c6cd7c) — 5/31/2014 @ 9:54 am

  12. July 12, eh? That is a Saturday, so no stock market play for me on this info.

    felipe (098e97) — 5/31/2014 @ 10:12 am

  13. Never felt it, but was getting rocked by Chi’s great game against the Kings.

    askeptic (8ecc78) — 5/31/2014 @ 11:09 am

  14. elissa (ee6233) — 5/31/2014 @ 9:51 am

    Almost as predictable as predictions of their predictability – and as reliable.

    askeptic (8ecc78) — 5/31/2014 @ 11:11 am

  15. askeptic–This really should be the Stanley Cup finals, because I think there’s little
    doubt the Kings and BlackHawks are the two best hockey teams.

    elissa (ee6233) — 5/31/2014 @ 11:25 am

  16. elissa,

    I had the exact same idea as the guy in the post you cited years ago. The tides are not just a phenomenon having to do with the water, but a gravitational phenomenon caused by the difference in gravitational pull of the Moon (and to a lesser degree the Sun) on one side of the Earth as opposed to the other. When all these earthquakes were happening in the very early morning hours (and by the way, the biggest one in my lifetime, the Northridge quake, was at 4:31 a.m. — not what I would consider “dawn” (sunrise was 2 1/2 hours later). When I went to correlate the tides with the times of quakes, I saw no correlation at all. (This was amateur research, mind you; I am no scientist.) Tides do not line up with “dusk” or “dawn” anyway.

    I asked someone who would know better at the time and they said that the effect of the tides was so small it could not possibly have an effect. I still think a fault on a hair trigger could be affected by tidal forces, but the egghead assured me with confidence that I was barking up the wrong tree. So while I find the idea interesting, I’m not sure I buy it.

    Patterico (9c670f) — 5/31/2014 @ 11:45 am

  17. They certainly have their moments.
    The Kings defeat the Sharks in 7, winning the last 3, and then go on to defeat the Ducks – after both teams finished ahead of them in the regular season.
    Chicago, another #3 seed like the Kings, advances after beating #2 Blues, and the #4 Timberwolves who showed Roy where he needed to improve his Colorado team.
    I’m torn, but lean towards what I call a “20th-Century Limited” final between the ‘Hawks and Rangers.

    askeptic (8ecc78) — 5/31/2014 @ 11:49 am

  18. 16- Most of the ‘big ones’ that I remember (going back to Tehachapi) are either early morning, or late afternoon.

    askeptic (8ecc78) — 5/31/2014 @ 11:53 am

  19. Everybody knows it’s global warmening what causes erf cakes.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/31/2014 @ 12:31 pm

  20. I would still rather live in earthquake countr rather than face almost yearly tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms or worse. Plus, we can still go the the beach and enjoy the sun in January!

    Dana (a17707) — 5/31/2014 @ 1:49 pm

  21. Almost Speedo season here!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 5/31/2014 @ 2:01 pm

  22. I love it when the gals wear those ‘almost Speedo’s’.

    askeptic (8ecc78) — 5/31/2014 @ 2:11 pm

  23. Oh Daley, just say no!

    Dana (a17707) — 5/31/2014 @ 2:20 pm

  24. Off topic, but I don’t know where to put it.

    Today, for the third time in my life, I know personally a [edestrian who was killed by a car.

    The first time, I found out about years later, from his son.

    The second time, I found out a few days later. (the president of our computer club)

    The third time I found out about it the next day.

    Coney Island Avenue is maybe dangerous to cross. A 61-year old woman (her approximate age) I think) was killed crossing it, by Avenue N.

    She was once injured in an accident while walking before. It was really her fault, she was drunk, but her family sued and she collected enough to mostly pay for a co-op apartment.

    This time it was the end. She probably was not drunk, but was less competent from years of prior abuse, which also included drugs of some sort.

    Sammy Finkelman (8cd742) — 6/1/2014 @ 10:54 am

  25. Patterico (9c670f) — 5/31/2014 @ 11:45 am

    When I went to correlate the tides with the times of quakes, I saw no correlation at all. (This was amateur research, mind you; I am no scientist.) Tides do not line up with “dusk” or “dawn” anyway.

    I asked someone who would know better at the time and they said that the effect of the tides was so small it could not possibly have an effect. I still think a fault on a hair trigger could be affected by tidal forces, but the egghead assured me with confidence that I was barking up the wrong tree

    Quakes are correlated with oil fields, though.

    Draw a circle, approximately 150 miles away from the epicenter of strong earthquakes, and I think you will find oil or gas. That was also amateur research – a casual look at maps.

    Sammy Finkelman (8cd742) — 6/1/2014 @ 11:00 am

  26. 24. This had nothing to do with her being incapacitated in any way, except maybe ayounger person wouldn’t have been killed by this. It would probably have been a very unusual person that would have had good enough reflexes to avoid this.

    Two cars were trying to beat the light, one going south on Coney Island Avenue, and one going east on Avenue N. They hit each other, spun around and hit her where she was walking in the crosswalk.

    She had a cart with her with gallons of water that had been filtered that she wasw taking fom one apartment to the other.

    It was on the news.

    http://7online.com/news/exclusive-chain-reaction-crash-leaves-one-woman-dead/88314/

    Some of the news reports get the time wrong. This happened at 11:30 am.

    Sammy Finkelman (8cd742) — 6/1/2014 @ 8:40 pm

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    mbimusic (a12e51) — 6/28/2014 @ 8:41 pm


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