FELT A BIG EARTHQUAKE TODAY

This afternoon, I was napping, when I was woken up by a rattling house. It was pretty strong, and the whole house moved. I heard the structure making it's noises, and a rumbling sound. There were some things slapping too. I was not scared at all and merely was frustrated that I could not get my i Phone seismograph application on in time.

The shaker lasted about 40 seconds, and it eased off at one point, and then picked up again. I have been studying that region, where the quake happened, for years. There have been a lot of earth quake swarms in that area for years, and over the past few days, there had been many moderate quakes, one being 4.1. And then this 7.2 hit this afternoon.

The region where this 7.2 quake hit is in a rifting zone, and spreading zone, where the North American and Pacific plates are pulling apart. This kind of area is known for it's volcanism. There is a quiet cinder cone close to where this quake occured, and there is enough hot magma under it to heat up a lot of water. Right near this cinder cone is one of the world's bigger thermal energy power plants.

This concerns me, for this is not an isolated quake. It is a part of a complex system that includes a nearby magma chamber, other near by magma chambers, and several faults. All of which are a part of the the rifting zone. This is at the south end of the San Andreas system, which ends at Bombay Beach, at the Salton Sea. The Mid Ocean Range ends at the Salton Sea.

Well, anyways, I can go on about the science of all this. All we have to keep in mind, is that California sits on some complex ground, and the people here need to be prepared for earthquakes.

I expect more to come, and wonder just how much the local magma chambers are agitated. If they are, we run the risk for volcanism.

But I'm calm about it. Not one bit of fear. It's just the world doing what it does.

Let me add that I gathered more info on the damage in Mexicali and other cities via social networking, which was almost immediate. The news was two or three hours behind with the images. These two on Twitter. I got within an hour.

Here's a link and some pics.

http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/