Sunday 18 February 2018

Earthquakes in strange places! Largest quake hits the UK in 10 years a rare quake hits New Hampshire hundreds of small earthquakes hit The Azores

Credit BSG.
It has been a week of earthquakes in strange places, a magnitude 4.4 near the South Wales city of Swansea was the largest earthquake on mainland Britain in almost 10 years, since the magnitude 5.2 ML Market Rasen earthquake on 27 February 2008.
According to BSG, a magnitude 5.2 ML earthquake in 1906 was one of the most damaging British earthquakes of the 20th Century, with damage to chimneys and walls reported from Kidwelly to Cardiff.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) said on Saturday, tremors were felt across parts of Wales and southwest England but no notable damage reported.

On Valentines Day The United States Geological Survey reported a magnitude 2.0 earthquake was centred around Sanbornton, New Hampshire.
A half-dozen other small earthquakes have rattled parts of New Hampshire and Maine over the past several weeks.
While unusual to have so many this close together, small earthquakes are not uncommon across New England.
In December 2017, a magnitude 4.1 on the Delaware coastline at a depth of 8 kilometres was the last "strange quake" to hit the US.
The earthquake struck just about 7 miles northeast of Dover Air Force Base at 4:47 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
It was originally labelled magnitude 4.4 before the USGS lowered the scale of the temblor.
According to  Delaware online .com a geophysicist, Cheng Shengzao, with the USGS, said the East Coast quake was surprising.
“This is wild. It’s not often that this happens,” Shengzao said.

On Monday, the mid-Atlantic Azores Islands experienced hundreds of small earthquakes on Monday, the Azores Center for Seismovolcanic Information and Surveillance (CIVISA) confirmed.
The tremors began shortly before midnight on Sunday and continued throughout Monday morning.
Most were microseisms, tremors caused by a natural phenomenon that cannot be felt by humans.
But around 20 of the earthquakes were strong enough to be felt by the local population.
"I was fast asleep when I suddenly felt the bed shaking," Helena Pacheco told the Portuguese Lusa News Agency.
"It's frightening as there's no telling what might happen."
According to the Portuguese Institute of Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), the strongest quake registered 3.6 on the Richter scale.
This places it in the scale's "minor" category.
The activity was focused on Sao Miguel island with the epicentre somewhere between the Fogo and Congro lakes.
The Azores islands archipelago is an autonomous region of Portugal and the regional capital, Ponta Delgada, is located on Sao Miguel island.
"The standard rules of security for these types of situations are in place, the civil protection and fire prevention services and municipal authorities have all been notified," Rui Luis, the regional health secretary, told local journalists.
"What we need now is for everyone to remain calm."

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