Hi All,

Sometimes I think we forget to look at the "set-up" conditions which were apparent before large earthquakes occur. I believe the situation currently in Alaska is a good example. After the 6.7 quake occurring on 10/23 something odd happened and that was in the lack of a moderate aftershock sequence. For days and days they only had 2's and 3 magnitude earthquakes, until the pair of twin 4's occurred prior to the 7.9 quake and now the whole place is abuzz with quakes in every direction. To me from the very beginning of the 6.7 event I kept thinking that something was not right and it wasn't. But its quite likely the Indonesia quake brought the 7.9 to fruition at the time it did, but I believe if that had not happened, something else, even just time and pressure alone would have made it occur anyway.

So what else is odd? The events prior to the Nisqually quake. There were 3 5.0+ quakes off the northern tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands, just three weeks before. But even more odd is that Washington is still on the move. Just three weeks ago an overpass that was deemed safe enough to be repaired with traffic flowing beneath, had a change of plan. The road was shut because they found the pillars for the overpass had continued to move since the time of the quake.

Sometimes I think the obvious is right in front of us, but we fail to see it because we are looking for something else. Though I have to take credit for being totally wrong about the epicenter of the 10/23 quake, I was not wrong in feeling strongly that the signs were there for a major quake.

Just another mention of unusual activity, today there was a quake southeast of Ensenada, Mexico. It is a place that rarely has quakes and was not on the San Andreas where they normally have such events. It was only a 3, but an odd three at that.

Petra