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Oklahoma Hit By Its Strongest-Ever Recorded Quake
First time accepted submitter Wheelie_boy writes "No word yet on hell freezing over, but Oklahoma experienced a 5.6 magnitude earthquake early Sunday morning. This is the largest quake ever recorded in the state. Only minor damage and no casualties have been reported."
Headline: strongest-ever quake causes minimal damages and hurts no one.
Why is this on /. ?
... Kind of scary if you've never been in an earthquake before. However, I was in a magnitude 6.0 earthquake a while ago in California, so this didn't seem too bad. The really wild thing is, I've now weathered a fire, an earthquake, and a tornado all in the same house. Maybe it's time to consider moving? :)
My blog
"its strongest-Ever Recorded" Learn to read.
Not that it isn't boring news, but the "its" the in title implies "in that region"
Seriously, 5.6 is lame after having felt the Tohoku quake earlier this year...
To be fair, it does use the possessive "its" to specify that it's Oklahoma's strongest earthquake, but still probably not especially newsworthy on a tech site.
Oops, that's my bad. Please mod accordingly.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Meh, I bet even a 7.8 I've been in was laughable compared to that one.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It is highly relevant because all the fracking conspiracy theorists hang out here. In fact I'm surprised no one has blamed this quake on it yet.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I clicked on this post expecting to see some sort of epic snark, and all I got was someone with piss-poor reading comprehension skills.
Fracking?
I'm in OK for business, and the quake got me out of bed last night.
I grabbed clothes and rushed downstairs ready to get out of the building, if needed, but when I got down there no one else was panicking or anything, so I supposed I was the only one who over-reacted. It was about 11pm.
It was pretty intense - I lived near San Diego for six years, and felt plenty of tremors, but the quake last night was the scariest I've felt. Possibly because I wasn't on the ground floor of the hotel.
Other than that, it wasn't a big deal. No one was streaming from the hotel and there weren't throngs of people screaming. There were lots of people calling the front desk asking if there had been an accident (no one could believe that it was a quake).
Interestingly, there was another quake the night before as well, a 4.2 (the guy at the front desk told me). That one didn't even wake me up though.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Here we go again. Climate Change: The Sequel pitting NY Times/Washington Post/NPR vs. talk radio/conservative think tanks.
I know! It's time we blame this quake on something a lot more aligned with reality: God's rage at gays and socialism.
Earth quakes, tornados, floods, etc. It's just God smiting the them for mean spirited politics and wacko religious views. Not that God hates those people mind you. He just doesn't approve of their "lifestyle".
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I'm just grateful that it isn't yet another Apple article.
If I had known moving to Tulsa would cause earthquakes I would have just come sooner.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
I can't help but notice that Slashdot has been posting more and more non-stories. I also can't help but notice that this started right after CmdrTaco left. So, this is pretty much how it's going to be from now on, eh? Some stories about Nokia or Apple, mixed in with a healthy dose of correct politics and ordinary news. An earthquake where no nuclear plants were damaged?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
This is a good reminder that earthquakes do eventually occur in many places that we like to think of as earthquake-proof, even if they're rare.
Having recently moved to the Chicago area from California, I find myself having to learn to live with the vague feeling of unease that's caused by the fact that the most popular building style here seems to be "big pile of bricks".
If an earthquake of substantial size ever does hit you in an area where they are rare enough that there's no pressure to make building codes stronger, then chances are your odds of dying will be a lot greater than if you lived in California where the new buildings are all very safe and the old buildings have at least been tested a few times.
So while living in the mid-west etc. greatly reduces your chance of experiencing a large earthquake, the reduction in risk for actually dying in an earthquake is probably not as large as people like to think.
G.
It was Saturday evening. Don't know how Sunday got mixed into this unless they were looking at UTC or something.
Are there sure it wasn't a stampede? Because I was under the assumption that only two things come from Oklahoma, and earthquakes aren't one of them.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
But at least we know the industry apologists are on faster.
In fact I'm surprised no one has blamed this quake on it yet.
Because the real culprit is right in front of our tentacles.
Wriggle in fear, miserable humanoids!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You build to suit the prevailing conditions. Here on the west coast of Scotland, we don't build to withstand earthquakes but we do build to withstand regular 140mph winds.
What I would like to find out is ... did this type of shaking provide a benefit to many of the older dried wells ( or low production wells ), I'm thinking that the shaking could have caused compression on the old drained wells.
Also, an earthquake of this magnitude might be the cause of the years of draining oil. I've always understood that there are minor quakes in drilling/pumping fields, but maybe a slightly larger one ( 2.0 to 3.0 is what I know as common ) of 5.0 might be something that we need to look forward to in drilling zones.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
There've been a bunch of helicopters swarming the area for a couple of weeks now. Coincidence? I think not.
I lived in CA for 20 years, and never felt an earthquake. I get stationed in Oklahoma, and six months later, BAM. Earthquake. xD
i went to sleep about 9:45 and just before 11:00 PM i wake up to the house rattling, i thought it was a low flying helicopter looking for something so i turn over and go back to sleep, then this morning i see the earthquake news all over the place.
i knew it could not be tanks rolling through the neighborhood because the sound was missing the metallic squeak that tanks have
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It could be fracking or the storage of fracking fluids or it could just be basic earth geology. But it is hard to do a cause and effect on earthquakes. Only time will time if more, larger quakes become frequent and can be triangulated back to large operating drilling rigs.
Arkansas isn't waiting to find out. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/27/arkansas-commission-votes-to-ban-wells/
Come now, nerds. All this talk and no science. How about something from the Oklahoma Geological Survey? They set out to disprove an earlier quake this year was the result of fracking. Instead, they found correlation:
http://www.eenews.net/assets/2011/11/02/document_pm_01.pdf
Here is some commentary on the report:
http://www.eenews.net/public/eenewspm/2011/11/02/1
Well, there's fracking. This was a shallow quake and all.
Also, if you are far enough away, eastern Oklahoma and the New Madrid fault line look very close to each other. And stories about the beginnings of the Mississippi Rift Valley are appropriate to the average developmental age of slashdot's readers and their interest in weird fictions.
So the story sort of fits here. About as well as many of slashdot's other stories.
Will
Now you have ruined my opportunity to downplay the quake by bragging about my experience of the Maule quake (a measly Mw 8.8). Satisfied?
Some experimental geothermal projects in Switzerland & Australia were aborted because people panicked about the possible relationship to small quakes in the area of the hydraulic fracturing.
Really a pity, IMO, a few smallish (Mw 4) quakes are a low price to pay for virtually unlimited and potentially very clean energy.
I have a sinking feeling there's more where that came from....
Within the last 5 hours there have been 7 quakes of 3.0 or greater. I lived in that general region for several years and never saw or heard of any activity (not that I was glued to the USGS or anything).
Of course the largest earthquake recorded was on April 4th, 1952 around El Reno, Oklahoma. However, if you discount the last 24 hours, there doesn't seem to have been much recent activity of note in that region of the state (some of the source material is quite dated). Here is more information on the region.
Meanwhile, another US state banned four fracking waste disposal wells because of the swarms of earthquakes which followed in the area (and greatly reduced once the disposal was stopped). http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/27/arkansas-commission-votes-to-ban-wells/
I don't think anyone was too sad to see it stopped. 4.7 quakes are too high of a price to pay to get rid of dirty fracking fluid.
They should be. They get paid to do it.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
“Thought our neighbor’s donkey had escaped from his pen and was scratching himself on the trailer”
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
Given the extremely high correlation between fracking and earthquakes, are you suggesting the mechanism runs the other way, and future earthquakes cause fracking in the past?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
We all know Oklahoma is a hotbed of wild-eyed liberalism, too.
"sometimes he felt that his whole life was a dream, and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
The quake is too deep to be a result of fracking. As someone who works oil/gas in central oklahoma, I know that the max depth they're fracking at is in the ballpark of 3km and the quake's hypocenter is at approx 5km according to the USGS (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usb0006klz/). The depth/height that fractures will go here is no where near a 2km, more like a max of a few tenths of a km.
Blogger sincedutch draws the link: https://sincedutch.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/1162011-evidence-that-oklahoma-is-having-a-man-made-earthquake-swarm-induced-seismicity-fracking/
It hit here at about 10:55PM. The whole house just started moving back and forth gently like a boat on water. It lasted about 15 seconds and there was no sound, but it was a surreal feeling.
I know, right!!! Those nutters at the Oklahoma Geological Survey really need to get a grip:
http://www.ogs.ou.edu/pubsscanned/openfile/OF1_2011.pdf
The gubment has too much undue influence in our great nation of the US OF A. Clearly, Obamacare is the cause of these quakes.
Wow. Talk about your homoerotic fantasies...
There is no part of the world which has no earthquake at all. Ever. What is probably the case is that most earthquake are so low in intensity as to be sensible only by instrumentation.
Especially if people are expending a lot of fracking time in Oklahoma...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
+50 sword against Balrog's - check
+10 "leather private's protector" - check
Ok, now I just need the machine from Captain America, and a few friends with an invisible jet.
And a Mago...
any hobbits in the area ?
1. earthquakes change earth's angular momentum 2. whole cities may have moved X cms, altering their GPS coordinates 3. people considering building a server farm for Android's version of iCloud will now need to think of quake coverage in their hazard insurance.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
I felt it!!!
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
I know the midwestern US is geologically stable - but a) earthquakes do happen there on occasion; and b) a 5.6 is amateur hour.
Those of us on the west coast see a 5.6 quake as an oatmeal stirrer, at best. And ask the residents of Japan and Chile about magnitude 5.6 quakes - their response is probably analogous to asking a Denver resident about the Appalachian "mountains".
#DeleteChrome
Here's the official info on the quake from the USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usb0006klz.php
I'm in Norman, OK, and there was definitely some pretty good shaking here, although not enough to cause any real damage (it knocked a stack of dvd cases off of my dresser... not sure if that counts as "damage"). In the small towns closer to the epicenter there was certainly some damage, however. At least one highway was buckled in a spot, and there were apparently multiple instances of chimneys collapsing and falling through people's roofs, so some luck was involved in no one getting seriously hurt. Not California level earthquake damage, sure, but perhaps more than just "minor", at least by OK earthquake standards.
There was also a 4.7 quake centered near the same spot around 2:15 local time yesterday morning. The area where the quakes occurred has occasionally been having small tremors for well over a year now, although the last one before yesterday that was strong enough for everyone in Norman to feel was last October (in 2010).
Seriously? I know for a fact that there have been quakes much stronger than 5.6.
Wasn't the one that hit Chile last year almost a 9 or something?
Trouble comprehending the topic of your own post?
Strongest ever recorded in Oklahoma.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
As someone who has lived in the DFW area for over 30 years, I can say that this event was rare for the north Texas area. Most of the people in the area didn't even feel the quake, but I happened to be on the top floor of my building, and felt some minor trembling. Exciting!--glad nobody was hurt.
Correlation is not causation.
http://www.okgeosurvey1.gov/pages/home.php
That area of Oklahoma is not a big natural gas location or oil producing area that I know of. The quake was approximately 30 miles from Cushing, Oklahoma. The "Pipeline Crossroads of the world", a major hub in pipelines that connect the gulf coast to the interior. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cushing,_Oklahoma No reported damage that I know of there.
It was extremely amazing for someone who's never felt an earthquake like that. A slow rumbling to start, felt like a big truck passing outside, then building up, and starting to shake the house more, then significant vibrations going on for some time. Very different from the last big earthquake that hit closer to Oklahoma City last Oct 2010. That one had a short sharp type vibration that didnt last very long at all. http://newsok.com/oklahoma-earthquake-small-to-moderate-quake-rattles-nerves/article/3504094
It wasn't until it was over that I gave any thought to trying to get out of the house or anything.
Come now, nerds. All this talk and no science. How about something from the Oklahoma Geological Survey? They set out to disprove an earlier quake this year was the result of fracking. Instead, they found correlation: http://www.eenews.net/assets/2011/11/02/document_pm_01.pdf
Here is some commentary on the report: http://www.eenews.net/public/eenewspm/2011/11/02/1
I'm glad you posted this.. but did you read it?
For all of those talking about hydrofracking / drilling / wastewater disposal wells in the same sentence, as if they are the same thing.. they are three completely different processes. First you drill a well. Then the drill rig leaves, and there is a well casing going to the formation. Hydrofracturing equipment moves in and swarms over the wellsite.. but this does not involve a tall drilling rig, as there is no drilling going on. High pressure water and sand are pumped downhole until the well is sufficiently fractured. Then the fracturing equipment leaves. The well makes oil, gas and water. Not always oil.. but usually. The water is useless, so it's trucked off. If there is a whole lot of water, then trucking is expensive, so they drill a wastewater disposal well which pumps the water into a different formation. Sometimes this is on a fault line, and sometimes it lubricates the fault so that earthquakes start happening.
But notice.. the wastewater disposal well is both not on the same site nor in the same formation as the hydrofractured well. If hydrofracturing has any effect at all, it must be due to fracturing on a fault line where there isn't already a lot of fluid accumulated.
Correct, BUT this correlation has a plausible causation, and therefore should be studied.
I seriously thought the roof was about to come down.. I live in east Edmond, about 30 miles from the strike point. I've lived in OK for most of my life, and we haven't had earthquakes until the last couple years. I've been through several 4+ magnitude quakes the last 2 years, and I can't help but think this correlates pretty well to the recent ramp up of fracking in OK.
Umm.. virtually unlimited and clean? Wtf are you smoking?
Stuff from the ground burned == carbon emissions + other things you should know since your smart.
Nothing is unlimited... And shit from the ground that doesn't cycle into itself instantly such as water does, will be limited.
The geothermal energy referred to doesn't involve burning anything...
I also wonder is if this (perhaps lubricating pre-existing fault lines as with salt water, as noted above) isn't a good thing, perhaps trading several smaller quakes for one large one?
It's those doggone terrorists again! I bet they're tunneling towards Yellowstone to set off the super volcano there and this is just a trial run!
Okay, no. Seriously. Please don't tell me you bought that.
It was bizarre. All was quiet and we were about to head to bed. Was on the couch catching up on the OSU-KSU post game. First there was the usual distant, muffled "boom". This is the usual MO for earthquakes in this area. A slight thud like someone bumping a car on the side of the house, followed by shaking for a few seconds. But it wasn't like the others... After the initial thud, the house shook vertically at a high frequency. Things rattled. Then the side-to-side motion began. The side-to-side motion was weird. Frequency of about 3 Hz, but the overall amplitude varied from low to high every three to five seconds. THAT combination of the vertical shaking and side-to-side motion continued to increase in amplitude for the next ten seconds or so and then sustained at that level for the next 45 seconds! Stuff was rattling around at that point. Furniture, the TV, and stuff on shelves were shifting and making noise. After about the 15 second mark, it got even more intense and I figured the doorway near the front door might be the best place, I moved over there. The sideways random motion continued for another 30 seconds or so before settling down. I'm not a Californian. Maybe you guys deal with this kind of thing weekly, but here in Oklahoma this is maybe once in a hundred years event. Honestly, after the first 15 seconds, the "fun" quickly waned and the concern focused on how bad this was going to tear up the house. FREAKY though. Overall the damage was minimal. Highway 62 got buckled at a few choke points and minor damage was reported at spots around the metro. I can tell you we are not earthquake fans after last night. You guys in California can have that crap.
I think the real pity is that a small drilling operation can't cause an earth quake. An earth quake is thousands of joules being released. It like saying that cutting a taught rubber band caused the rubber to go flying. No it the stored energy being released. Simply put the earth quake is being released by the drill allowing a shift under the earth. However, these energy is usually building due to tectonic movement. So in realty the earth quake is smaller then one that would eventual be released sometime in the future.
It's the tsunami that will kill you in California, you should build houses for fish :)
One of the revelations of the recent Christchurch earthquake was a realization that building codes had been made with assumptions about ground shaking that were underestimations; if there was a similar earthquake under one of the main Californian cities, the results might not be pretty.
This is totally true. California building codes would be totally useless in Chicago, where it is a lot more important that a building be able to withstand a raging blizzard at 30 below than it is an earthquake.
Buildings in California that are fully up to code, would likely not last a single winter in the north. For one thing the way you do footings for an earthquake zone is totally different than how you do them in a frost-prone zone, and if you are trying to plan for both then things get complicated.
Having recently moved to the Chicago area from California, I find myself having to learn to live with the vague feeling of unease that's caused by the fact that the most popular building style here seems to be "big pile of bricks".
And may I add to that "built on top of a swamp".
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
OK 3 km, Cal, 25 km Also type of ground type of fault All of these variable make magnitude vs damage unreliable.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Correlation is not causation.
True. The earthquakes probably caused the fracking, not the other way around.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I felt it in St. Louis, but not as strongly as the 5.x in southeastern Illinois a couple years ago that woke me up. They have a much bigger range of strength due to lack of faults here in the middle of the plate.
Aside from the fact that no regions on earth nor under-the-seas are immune to seismic activitiy - subsidence caused by over half-a-century of
oil and
natural gas -
extraction (not counting water wells) makes far more sense than blaming (the trendy new scapegoat known as) fracking.
Another possible cause is too many lard-assess apparently sitting on their toilets all at once during the commercial break just before the 11 o'clock news.
And the best solution of all is to BAN ARKANSAS hill-billies from holding public office.
Anyone quoting odds?
That's not what the headline says. The headline says Oklahoma was hit by the strongest-ever recorded quake.
Words mean what they mean, and groups of words mean what they say. If they wanted to say it was the strongest quake in Oklahoma, they should have written it. They instead chose to write something completely false.
Look up "New Madrid Fault"...
Best Slashdot Co
When the largest earthquake ever recorded barely causes any damage and the historical average is 50 sub-3 quakes that only a handful of people ever feel, I don't think you can compare CA quakes to Okla.
I felt both the 4.8 and 5.6 EQ. We have severe rain today. Tomorrow it will probably be 115 again and the day after -31 with a tornado in the middle of a blizzard that has an embedded sand-storm. This state gets weirder by the minute. The best part about it are all the tee shirts coming out of the boutique shops like "I survived Okiequake 2011". Another funny one is a picture of a lawn chair tipped over with the caption "Okiequake 2011: Time to rebuild"
Ming, where are you? When is the hot hail coming?