Magnitude 4.9 Quake Hits Ridgecrest Friday Morning
People who were in bed just rolled over and went back to sleep and were relieved that the power didn't go out!
A series of powerful earthquakes and aftershocks left much of Southern California trembling over the long holiday weekend. The most powerful of the quakes, a magnitude 7.1, struck on July 5th, and it shared its epicenter with a slightly less intense magnitude 6.4 quake from the day prior.
Unfortunately, we found there is a huge chamber of magma far, far larger than even Yellowstone. We have now confirmed it’s a new supervolcano forming. The magma chamber is very active but it is not yet rising to the surface. We fear that another major quake may cause a large fracture enabling the magma to shoot to the surface. FEMA, the National Guard and other agencies have been alerted and are on standby to evacuate key VIPs.
Earthquake swarms are common in the Coso area, often producing hundreds of tremors over periods as short as a few days. This brisk and robust seismic activity is common in volcanic areas, such as Long Valley Caldera near Mammoth Lakes, and Yellowstone Caldera at Yellowstone. The Coso Volcanic Field shows examples of volcanic activity, probably last active 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, but ash emission and small cone building episodes may be Holocene (>10,000 years) in age.
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