Hi All. Yesterdays San Simeon quake reminded me a little of the 1952 Kern County quake and the 1983 Coalinga quake.

When they first started I wasn’t really sure if we were having a quake or not. However over a period of a couple of seconds it seemed to grow as if it had a life of its own. The shaking continued to grow until you just knew the next shake was going to bring down everything around your ears.

The San Simeon quake was much the same way. I was sitting at the computer when I noticed the monitor was moving. At first I thought it was the picture itself, but then I noticed my lamp was also moving. Up until now I wasn’t feeling anything. It was a couple of seconds later that I began to feel movement that started growing larger and larger. I knew the quake wasn’t in my area, because we can hear them. There was no sound with this quake.

When I first felt the quake it came at me from the south. After about 30 seconds it seemed to come from the west as the mobile home I live in was now rocking front to back. It was about now that the shaking started to decrease.

Not sure when I click on the USGS site to see where the quake was at, but it had to have been done while the quake was still occurring. Much to my surprise there was nothing there. I waited for what seemed like a minute, but I’m sure it wasn’t much longer then a couple of seconds before clicking refresh. Still nothing. I then went to Mori and what a show that was. The lines were off scale at the top and bottom. I watched it for a bit then went back to the USGS site. There was my quake. The first though that came to my mind was what in the hell is a quake of this magnitude doing there? The first thing I did was to get the location of the quake and then went to the ANSS quake catalog. What I found was that there had been an M>6.2 quake 5 miles north of this quake on 11/22/1952. It was about this time that the Kern County quake came to mind. It had occurred in July of 1952. The Coalinga quake was 11 years later in 1983 and now this quake, which is 20 years after the Coalinga quake and 50 years since the last quake in this area. Of course we can’t leave out Parkfield, which is in the middle of all of this. They had strong quakes 1934 and 1966 as well as other times. However the biggest one was the 1857 quake that occurred near the town of Cholame. This is about 25 miles south of Parkfield. You can still see the results of that quake.

All of this makes one wonder when the next shoe is going to drop. Take Care…Don in creepy town