Hi All. Take about earthquake swarms. This has got to be a record of some kind. I had watched this swarm with considerable interest because of the direction it was heading. My first thought was that if this kept going in the same direction more or less it could have an influence on the Tokai area.

It doesn’t seem to have affected the Tokai area with but one exception. There is a small area that is moving in the opposite direction of the area to each side of it. I saw this on the NHK news from Japan. It was more of a short documentary as opposed to a newscast. At the time of the newscast last year it had been on going for about 3 years. At the AGU last hear I was able to talk to a seismologist from Japan who was familiar with the area. He stated that it was closer to 2 years and that there still wasn’t any idea as to how this is going to affect the next Tokai quake. Anyway back to the quake swarm which may be the mother of all swarms. Take Care…Don in creepy town

Better forecasting of damaging earthquake swarms may now be more possible after scientists helped to confirm a theory by USGS seismologist James H. Dieterich of how and why swarms occur. The scientists investigated a "super-swarm" of earthquakes offshore Tokyo that struck in the summer of 2000. The research, by Geological Survey of Japan scientist Shinji Toda, USGS scientist Ross Stein, and Geographical Survey Institute of Japan scientist Takeshi Sagiya, will be the cover article in the Sept. 5 edition of Nature. Both Japanese authors were recent post-doctoral scientists at the USGS in Menlo Park, California. In the super-swarm of earthquakes the authors studied, a staccato-like burst of 7,000 magnitude-3 or larger shocks occurred over 2 months about 100 miles south of Tokyo, underneath the Pacific Ocean. There were 45 magnitude-5 shocks and 5 magnitude-6 shocks.

• Quake Swarm In Japan