Hi Roger. Drats. I thought I was learning a new word used by seismologists. I know it’s creep, but in this case the creep is much, much slower then the creep in front of the obstruction or behind it.

The obstruction is to big to shear so it has to move around it and when it does we get a whopper of a quake. This is what they believed happened with the Loma Prieta quake. The area where the quake occurred was thought to have been so tightly compressed that it couldn’t move, but when the two M>5.0+ occurred 15 and 2 months prior to the quake they gave it just enough room to move. Take Care…Don in creepy town