27 February 2010
Massive Quake in Chile Shakes Seismographs Around The World
Posted by Dan Satterfield
Image of Seismogram at Nevada Seismic Lab in Nevada. The quake in Chile was so strong it is pegging the meters on seismograms world wide this morning.
An 8.8 Magnitude quake has hit Chile. It was recorded at a depth of only 35km. This is very shallow and likely means that catastrophic damage is possible. Large aftershocks are already being recorded.
Data and images from USGS- about 300,000,000 people were close to the quake. 6 million felt a magnitude 7 quake.
The quake hit when most people were in bed asleep.
The USGS says this quake occurred 230 km north of the location of the 9.5 quake of May 1960. That quake holds the record for the largest magnitude quake measured with instruments. It killed over 1600 people.
Update Saturday afternoon:
A Tsunami Warning remains in effect for many areas of the Pacific. The BBC web site as usual has the best coverage world wide. The pictures of roads and bridges in Chile are frightening. We live on a very dynamic planet. It’s easy to forget that sometimes.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
I must be honest bro, your blog is simply stunning. I found it simply by crawling around Google and in all honesty I am without a doubt thankful that I did. Keep it up. On a sidenote, http://videotrends.net/ has the first video footage I’ve seen on this event.