Hi 2 Cents,

While I can understand your reason for wanting to break down the factors of percentage of chance, with odds greater than random, it will not produce any results that would be beneficial in forecasting major EQ events.

Earthquakes are just going to show up wherever they darn well please, random or not. But what we have to remember is that a 5.0 quake in one's own neighborhood can be as devastating as a 7.0 one hundred miles away. Just in the past two days we've seen some interesting quakes. The area in Ukiah that had the 4.1 hasn't had a quake in almost two years. The one in Salinas today didn't even occur on a commonly mapped fault.

If you will recall back in October Don told us that the Bay Area would see increased activity in the coming months and particularly in December. And as you've seen, not only have we had increased activity, but the quakes are larger as well.

There are a lot of precursors to earthquakes, but to say an area is going to have a large quake because it has small quakes is ineffective as well as places that have sudden earthquakes with no precursors at all. The 5.0 Bolinas quake in 1999 had no foreshocks, nor aftershocks and then we had the surprising 5.2 quake in Yountville. That's an odd place for a 5.2. So as we can see quakes don't always show up in place where "we think they should."

Though Don's method can stand on its own, he does find input from we sensitives helpful. Often we will point out an area we are getting signals from and he take that information into account when he makes a forecast. So it enhances the quality and certainly better defines the area.

As for a public forecast of a major quake, we can almost put money in the bank by saying "no government office is going to issue one." While it is their concensus that we are not ready, I think its the other way around.

Just my penny's worth....Petra