The North American Craton has experienced hefty movement
over the past 72 hours.
The largest movement occurred along the South Central
portion of the craton "edge" , at the fracking operations in
Oklahoma.
A noteworthy 4.2 magnitude occurred just a few hundred feet
away from the nearest injection well.
Also, the movement in Arizona (at the New Mexico border) as
well, as the movement at the Nevada / Oregon border, are both volcanic
related:
The location at the Nevada / Oregon border is another
example of a dormant volcano showing signs of activity:
Expect some form of larger earthquake either to the far
Northwest tip of the craton in British Columbia, or to the far Southwest
tip near Salton Sea.
Also, watch Yellowstone / Idaho. With all the other movement
in the 3.0M+ range, we've got to expect some compensation along the direct
edge of the craton, at the Yellowstone weak point.
New Madrid, and East Coast.... be on watch. What size
movement? Possibly larger than usual. Normally we see a few mid 2.0M events
occur (as compensation movement) after this kind of seismic activity in the
South and West.
In otherwords, watch the perimeter edge of the craton in the
near term for possible noteworthy movement.
Its a large area to watch, but the signs of stress are
there. Indeed, Nevada / Oregon, California, Arizona, and Oklahoma show
major activity in the past 72 hours.
Monitor earthquakes via the links here:
In other news, in Iceland, a "supervolcano"
located beneath a glacier in Iceland is showing major signs of activity,
multiple hundred earthquakes in a short amount of time, occurring at a
shallow level near the Caldera.
Professionals have raised the alert level to Orange, but are
saying no threat of eruption is imminent (yet).
The Bardarbunga Volcano stands to cause serious problems in
the Northern Hemisphere if it erupts. Air travel being one of the
many things to be effected, if this volcano erupts any time soon.
Like previous eruptions in Iceland, as with the 2010
eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, ash clouds can lead to serious problems
thousands of miles away from the eruption itself.
"The world's airline industry is on alert after
Icelandic authorities have raised the alarm over a sudden flurry of
small earthquakes that could cause one of the country's largest volcanoes
to erupt.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office warned Tuesday it
has detected more than 3,000 minor earthquakes since Saturday along a
fault line in the country's centre.
Above:
Image from the Icelandic Meteorological Office shows a dramatic increase in
seismic activity along several fault lines surrounding Bardarbunga Volcano
(August 19 2014)
______
Much of the activity is clustered around Bardarbunga — a
subglacial stratovolcano under Iceland's largest glacier. "Several of
these events were larger than magnitude 3," the office warns, with one
touching 4.5 on the Richter scale — the strongest in that region since 1996
— although none has been that strong in the past 24 hours.
Although seismic activity in Iceland is routine, the sudden
increase in number and intensity has volcanologists worried, because the
last time similar activity was seen was in April 2010,
when Eyjafjallajokull erupted and the plume of ash and
smoke grounded transatlantic air travel for the better part of a month.
Seismologists say magma is moving horizontally, not yet
vertically, and "no signs of migration towards the surface or any
other signs of imminent or ongoing volcanic activity have been detected so
far."
However, the aviation alert level has been raised to the
second-most severe level as a precaution.
"Presently there are no signs of eruption, but it
cannot be excluded that the current activity will result in an explosive
subglacial eruption, leading to an outburst flood … and ash
emission," the office said."
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