Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A Creep of Micro-Quakes up Both Sides of the Coachella Valley


California-Nevada Fault Map centered at 34°N,116°W

A few days after the strange crossed pattern of micro-quakes south of Palm Springs in the Imperial Valley and around the Salton Buttes Volcano, some very small micro-quakes have happened over the last 24 hours in the Coachella Valley, the valley where rests Palm Springs. These are 1.0 to 1.5 mag, and are located on each side of the narrow rift generated valley. On the north side of the valley is the famed and powerful San Andreas Fault.

These micro-quakes you'll see as blue dots at the north west of the large body of water and just south east of Palm Springs, and in Palm Springs itself as one 1.0 mag in downtown.

The San Andreas starts at Bombay Beach at the Salton Sea to goes for 700 miles to north. It's associated system goes even farther! Some say to the Yukon, while others note a branch that veers west goes to the Midway Islands. The San Andreas is a transform fault spun off by the 7000 mile long Mid-Oceanic Ridge and it's rift zone to the South, one ending at the Salton Sea, and extending south for thousands of miles before veering west, near Antarctica on one branch. It is all this interconnectivity of this fault that I find compelling.


No comments:

Post a Comment