Hi All,

Today's a good earthquake day. You know, the interesting type where no one gets hurt, but also the kind that kind of make you scratch your head and say, umm, interesting.

Here's the list from the USGS/USA site. As you'll notice there was a 3.8 in Arkansas, but its not on the map, only on the list. But yet, there was a 2.0 listed by the NEIC for New England and yet its not on the USA map either. Makes you wonder sometimes. Is the jury still out, so its worthy of listing, but not worthy of a dot on the map?

3.0 2002/08/22 21:47:58 37.824 -121.945 16.6 3 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Danville, CA
4.7 2002/08/22 19:25:16 43.978 -128.375 10.0 339 km (211 mi) WNW of Coos Bay, OR
5.0 2002/08/22 19:24:12 43.924 -128.346 10.0 336 km (209 mi) WNW of Coos Bay, OR
3.8 2002/08/22 11:39:25 55.366 -159.041 8.0 61 km ( 38 mi) S of Perryville, AK
3.4 2002/08/22 02:03:19 19.313 -155.220 7.0 42 km ( 26 mi) SW of Hawaiian Beaches, HI
3.6 2002/08/22 01:55:45 19.310 -155.224 9.0 43 km ( 26 mi) SW of Hawaiian Beaches, HI
3.0 2002/08/22 01:39:12 61.539 -152.032 18.4 55 km ( 34 mi) SW of Skwentna, AK

From the NEIC:

2002/08/22 18:58:37 41.53N 72.10W 12.0 2.0 SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND

But while we're on the topic of strangeness, let me impart a little bit of a conversation Don and I had last evening. He said he took a nap yesterday and just as he was waking up from this nap of his he said he had a dream where he saw quite a few quakes in the Northern, CA area, some 5's and some 7's and bingo, what happens, today we get two moderate quakes off of Coos Bay, Oregon. Well, it was only a dream, right?

Now, let's talk about the 3.0 in Danville. For the past week Danville has had about five small quakes and then today the 3. This is so typical for this area, so please don't become alarmed about it. Some years ago Alamo, which is a close neighbor to Danville had a series of 10 or so quakes in the 1's to upper 3's and it made the folks out there, rather apprehensive, but nothing larger followed. So more than likely, this will be a repeat pattern. Danville sits near the base of Mt. Diablo, which looks nearly like a volcano, but isn't volcanic. It's just one darn large mountain in the middle of nowhere. But it looks terrific when covered with snow. I used to live right behind it for five years and wouldn't you know, not one single quake occurred during my residence. Go figure? But I do get to look at it every day during my commute. As Bob Shannon always says, now I have the "ethos" for it.

Ethos or no, it was a good earthquake day.

Petra

• The Seismic Safety Zone