Hi Kate and Cathryn,

Matching ear tones with locations requires a few skills. The first one is to listen. Every ear tone for a specific fault has its own sound and when you listen carefully to the tone itself in time as you can match them with the quakes you'll know why they match. Its down to the geology of the area.

I know now that subduction zone tones like Nisqually and the granite in the Sierra's both produce a high pitched tone. They are different, but yet the quality of the sound is the same. But the volume of the sound tells you how large an earthquake should be when it arrives.

There are places like the San Andreas south of Parkfield, but north of Ft. Tejon that sound very earthy. This is where I believe deep, dark and ugly will one day produce a very large earthquake, perhaps greater than a 7, but lower than an 8. But as to when, I have no idea.

After a few attempts at looking closely at the mileage distance on quakes near the end of 2001, Don and I set a hypothetical distance at 37/38 miles per second of ear tone. We've settled on 40 mi per second as its easier to calculate and so far, so good. But with the ring map, its like looking at the another pieced of the puzzle and a major breakthrough. To see the cities and towns line up with the rings, seeing for ourselves that indeed those locations did have quakes frequently was very exciting.

But one facet that I do not understand, which of course is important, very important is the timing mechanism. If and when this becomes known, then at last we will have something that is workable. We feel now it has to do with the faults themselves and through careful cataloging, with repeated quakes in the same locales we may be able to get a handle on this segment.

Cathryn, I hope you recover quickly. I sprained my neck getting out of bed a little over a week ago and boy oh boy that hurts.

Petra