Earthquake Warning Update – Posted by EQF on June 6, 2011

The Time Window for the Earthquake Warning that I circulated on May 18, 2011 expired on May 23, 2011.

Those warning and advisory time windows are presently only about 4 or 5 days long.

The EM Signals that I work with can apparently be generated weeks, months, and perhaps even years before the earthquake responsible for them occurs. And at the present it does not make much sense to circulate an Earthquake Warning for one that might not occur for several months.

However, earlier this year I discovered that when two strong EM Signals are detected within a few hours of one another then there is perhaps a 75% chance that the earthquake responsible for the signsl will occur within 4 or 5 days. So, when those types of signals are detected I am generally trying to circulate an Earthquake Warning or Advisory.

Myanmar Earthquake

Lately I have been able to determine why at least some of the earthquakes fall into that 25% of the cases when the expected earthquake does not immediately occur.

That can happen when the EM Signals are detected within a few days after a very powerful earthquake occurs. That happened around March 12, 2011, just after that catastrophic earthquake in Japan. And my data indicate to me that the expected earthquake might have been the one that occurred on March 24, 2011 in Myanmar, a week after the end of my expected earthquake time window.

It is unfortunate that no forecasters around the world that I know about were able to spot the approach of that earthquake. It reportedly claimed more than 100 lives.

Iceland Volcano

Something else that just appeared as a likely reason why an earthquake will not occur within the expected time window after two strong EM Signals are detected within a few hours of one another is volcanic activity.

It looks likely that the numerous strong EM Signals that were detected on May 18, 2011 might have been amplified and perhaps accelerated by the volcano that started to erupt in Iceland a few days later. The signals were still probably earthquake related. But their expected time windows were not reliable because of the volcano. And had it not been getting ready to erupt the signals might not have even been strong enough to be detected.

This looks fairly probable because after it erupted I checked its history and I saw that it last erupted in early October of 2010. I went back into my EM Signal records and was stunned to see that strong EM Signals were also detected at the same time as that last volcanic eruption. These types of signals are not detected that often. So it is unlikely that two groups of strong signals would be detected like that at the same times that the volcano erupted.

Update Information

One or two earthquakes were and still are expected.

The first one that I was most concerned about was for central Asia areas down to the Indian Ocean.

Warnings with exact locations for that area have been circulated to the appropriate parties. And I am still advising those people to watch for possible earthquake precursor activity in those locations.

The second earthquake was and is not expected to be as significant. And my data indicate to me that it could occur somewhere in the northwest part of the U.S. They suggest that fault zones around the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate might be getting unstable. And that would mean an earthquake could eventually occur in that area.

With this earthquake I did expect that the delay could be as much as a month or more after May 18, 2011.

Below is my latest Chart A with some earthquake data added for a Seattle earthquake that occurred back in 2001 and a low magnitude Seattle earthquake that occurred on June 6, 2011.

As the orange circles indicate, the line peak groups for that June 6 earthquake look suspiciously similar to some of the line peak groups for a number of past Chart A time windows. And I am wondering if that June 6 earthquake might be an indicator that there could be more approaching seismic for that area, or perhaps a little farther to the west.

If that is the case then I would expect that people in that area would likely be able to observe different types of earthquake precursors before any stronger seismic activity occurred there. They would be things such as such as large numbers of reports of wild, farm, zoo, and pet animals behaving unusually. That area is probably heavily monitored by quite a few different forecasting groups and individuals.