Did you hear it?
We did. Two of them. Last month. In Southeast Arlington.
*Update:
StateImpact Texas wrote about these loud booms:
For the past few weeks, we have had reports of people hearing "loud booms" and "explosion-like noises" from north... http://t.co/LX5GVMTspZ
— DFW Scanner (@DFWscanner) January 12, 2014
***Be sure to click on the link to DFW Scanner's Facebook page. The last time we looked there were nearly 500 800 comments. Feel free to add your thoughts.
Even a Twitter poet in Oklahoma writes about the booms associated with these quake swarms:
Shaking to the core ~ tremendous jolt of earthquake ~ unexpected boom #haiku
— Janice Reynolds (@Jannagae) November 2, 2013
The "booms" can be easily explained away...BUT when we know there are earthquake swarms to the northwest of Fort Worth (the Azle, TX Quake Swarm) and in Oklahoma (the Oklahoma Quake Swarm) and that fault lines are often unknown until there are earthquakes (as stated on the USGS web site) AND when we call 911 and the police can't explain the "Booms," then we really do need to look a lot deeper.
ReplyDeleteFrom the United States Geological Survey Web site:
[...]
Induced Seismicity
As is the case elsewhere in the world, there is evidence that some central and eastern North America earthquakes have been triggered or caused by human activities that have altered the stress conditions in earth's crust sufficiently to induce faulting. Activities that have induced felt earthquakes in some geologic environments have included impoundment of water behind dams, injection of fluid into the earth's crust, extraction of fluid or gas, and removal of rock in mining or quarrying operations. In much of eastern and central North America, the number of earthquakes suspected of having been induced is much smaller than the number of natural earthquakes, but in some regions, such as the south-central states of the U.S., a significant majority of recent earthquakes are thought by many seismologists to have been human-induced. Even within areas with many human-induced earthquakes, however, the activity that seems to induce seismicity at one location may be taking place at many other locations without inducing felt earthquakes. In addition, regions with frequent induced earthquakes may also be subject to damaging earthquakes that would have occurred independently of human activity. Making a strong scientific case for a causative link between a particular human activity and a particular sequence of earthquakes typically involves special studies devoted specifically to the question. Such investigations usually address the process by which the suspected triggering activity might have significantly altered stresses in the bedrock at the earthquake source, and they commonly address the ways in which the characteristics of the suspected human-triggered earthquakes differ from the characteristics of natural earthquakes in the region.(emphasis added)
[...]