Hi All. Since Petra and I are planning on meeting Dr. Roger Musson at the AGU fall meeting I thought I would try and find something that we could talk about. Well anyway something that will be fresh on his mind.

I suspect most of us already know about the popcorn quakes in Manchester UK so I thought I would try and find something about them. I wouldn’t say I hit the jackpot, but it does come pretty close to it. Take Care…Don in creepy town

The recent events in the Manchester area since 19 October 2002 are unusual in the UK in that they appear to be a sequence of earthquakes of moderate magnitude without a distinctive mainshock event of magnitude very much larger than the other events. This type of activity is called an‘earthquake swarm’. We here in the U.S. call this an “earthquake cluster.” Though they are unusual, earthquake swarms have happened before in other regions of the UK. Examples include Comrie (1788-1801, 1839-46), Glenalmond (1970-72), Doune (1997) and Blackford (1997-98, 2000-01) in central Scotland, Constantine (1981, 1986, 1992-4) in Cornwall, and Johnstonbridge (mid1980s) and Dumfries (1991,1999) in the Borders. The largest recorded earthquake within such a series in the UK has not exceeded magnitude 5, approximately the magnitude of the 2002 Dudley earthquake, which only caused minor damage to chimneypots and a church spire.

• Manchester UK