Don..interesting link. I have not seen John V post here in quite a while...we could use comments and posts by a working seismologist. The accelerated creep of stations right over the rupture could mean that slip during the quake was greater at depth than right at the surface and it take a while for the surface to catch up....I think this is not unusual (Superstition Hills?). But, the lateral growth of the slip is interesting. I'd take this to mean that the next segment, Cholame, is continuing to weaken (that is the kind of statement that needs seismologist comment). By the way, I mentioned to a seismologist at lunch last week that I had "guessed" daily odds for next Sumatra great quake for periods of months, years, and a century, and he was, to put it mildly, not impressed. In my defense, I think having those odds would be useful, and he did not answer when I asked if anyone had done it correctly. The question would be, if someone looked at the paleo-seismic record (Kerry Sieh's work), and looks at global subduction quakes, and did the statistics correctly, would their answer actually be more accurate than my guess? But, true, got to watch the guessing...one reason I am semi-anonymous...so I can make semi-irresponsible posts like that. Oh, yeah...just because there was no precursor recorded at Parkfield does not mean that in a different area, for a different type of quake (for example, next Sumatra subduction quake), there would not be a very different situation. Also...I know Petra predicted the quake, but if it is true that failure initiated in a patch a few meters across, and no instruments detected that, how is it going to emit any kind of energy that can be detected as an ear tone at distance? We are talking physics here. The prediction stuff that Tom Jordan is working with is going to demand that stuff make sense...that it be scientific...and whether or not the ear tone group can predict quakes (and I have not seen any successful predictions during 2005) will almost not matter.
Chris