Huge earthquake off the Oregon coast

Sparks fears of the “Big One.”

A magnitude-6.3 offshore earthquake 6.3 hit 188 miles (302) west of Bandon, Oregon, earlier today at a depth of about 6 miles (10 km), according to the USGS. Bandon is about 100 miles north of the California border.

The quake has sparked fears that the so-called “Big One” could hit any time now.

The “Big One” strikes along the 700-mile-long Juan de Fuca Ridge about every 400 years as one tectonic plate dives beneath another. The area is also known as the Cascadia subduction zone

Previous “Big Ones”, all of which reportedly measured above a magnitude-8, are estimated to have hit in 600BC, 170BC, 400AD, 810AD and 1310AD – which means the next one could be overdue.

The shake followed an intense week of seismic activity in which the so-called Ring of Fire was rocked by 70 quakes in just 48 hours.

(Note: Some of this info is from The Sun, which is not always known for its accuracy. However, I did confirm from the USGS website [link below] that such an earthquake did occur today.)
Thanks to Vance and Benjamin Napier for these links

The USGS has since downgraded the quake to a magnitude 6.2.

30 thoughts on “Huge earthquake off the Oregon coast”

  1. The PNW is not ready for this fury. I was there in Seattle for the 6.8 Nisqually quake in 2001. You go bigger than that it’ll be ugly.

    • The 8.2 565 km deep quake at Fiji is most likely the deepest large quake ever recorded. Then days later the possible 2 deepest mid range quakes were recorded in near proximity of the 8.2.
      This is being rumored about to be uncharted water as to what or where will be transpiring next?
      Be guaranteed, this is a precursor to a major uptick of events leading to a probable “Big One” in a couple years or less.

    • Any pressure relieved will be very small. The Enhanced Richter scale being used now is logarithmic with a steep curve as the intensity increases. It would take at least 100s of 6+ quakes to relieve the pressure that 1 9+ quake relieves.

      Oregon and Washinton are not prepared for what will happen at their coastlines. I don’t think that is even possible to prepare. The induced tsunami could be as bad as the one that killed so many people in Thailand and Indonesia.

  2. 30|quakes in the pacific isnt that unusualk i watch it daily for the last few yrs
    today at this time 7/13pm in aus i see theres around FOURTEEN all over 5+ and majority shallow ones.
    large one down from Aus is likely to have a folllow on quake on our mainland somewhere in the next 2 or so weeks
    Ive noticed a pattern with that happening.

  3. The quake was actually on a transform fault that runs between the East Pacfic Plate and the Juan de Fuca Plate. The Juan de Fuca Plate is the actual plate being subducted in the Cascadia subduction zone. Transform faults – like the San Andreas – have horizontal relative motions between the two sides rather than vertical movements (other than local buckling). Unless something really unusual happens, there is little threat of a tsunami, which is the primary coastal hazard from a quake in the actual subduction zone. The vertical displacement is what triggers the tsunami.

  4. Still looking for the reference but earth scientists have recently decided that largish quakes on one side of the “Ring of Fire” can trigger similar events on the other side.

  5. I also read the Sun’s article. The basis of fact is there, but the hype was as well. The triangle they drew was particularly laughable. I can draw a triangle between quakes any day of the week, it means nothing. That doesn’t mean something bigger isn’t coming, because it certainly is, but their triangle has no basis.

    • I believe the triangle is relative of sound displacement along the fracture lines, containing harmonics that generate equal magnitude and distances relative to the linear transfer.
      That is what I have been led to understand in my readings of not only the triangles but what is being called silent zones by many now?

  6. Robert (and others) I hope you have had a chance to look up James Hogan’s book Kicking the Sacred Cow! I mentioned on 8th Aug. Velikovsky was dumped on, Duesberg on AIDS, global warming a fallacy. Lots more. Velikovsky dumped on but he was right, on a lot! Cheers Heidi

  7. In that list of past catastrophic Cascadia Subduction Zone quakes, they left out the most recent one in AD 1700. You see a lot of talk about the CSZ being “overdue”, but if you do the math on those dates, the time interval between them ranges from 390 to 570 years, and averages 460 years. Using the average, you might expect the next ~9.0 magnitude quake around the year 2160. On the basis of the intervals between the past episodes, the soonest you would expect one is around 2090, and it could happen as far down the road as 2270. So not exactly “overdue”.

  8. Dutchsinse, on YouTube, does a good job of short term earthquake forecasting. He forecast the 2nd Lombok/Bali quake for example.

    Also the Fiji quake was very notable. At 550km it is the 2nd biggest ‘deep source’ quake recorded. However, adjusting for depth, it would have measured 9.3.

    Ranking all the largest quakes known to man, the biggest ever was a 9.4 in Chile.

    The significance of all of this activity isn’t to be underestimated.

  9. I have always tended to scoff at the idea of the sun causing earthquakes. How can a gentle thing like sunshine shake the earth? But some people smarter than I have told me to think again. Not only does the gentle sunshine brew up huge hurricanes, but there seems to be some correlation between a “Quiet Sun” and massive volcanic eruptions. For example the Dalton Minimum began in 1798, and two of the biggest volcano eruptions of the last millennium, (bigger than Krakatoa), occurred in 1810 and 1815, leading to a huge discharge of sea-ice into the North Atlantic and a year-without-a-summer in Western Europe.

    (Sorry, Robert, for high-jacking the thread to the topic of sea-ice. It’s a problem I have.)

    • This Wikipedia link shows the approximate dates when previous large earthquakes occurred in this area: 1700 AD, 1310 AD, 810 AD, 400 AD, 170 BC and 600 BC. Anyone care to take the time to see how these dates correlate with sunspot minimums?

      • 1700 AD, 1310 AD would be within the little ice age. 810 AD would be within the dark age which probably was during a little or even a mini ice age. Beyond that I would be guessing. On the other hand if we are in a pattern of 208 years of warm periods followed by roughly 500 year little ice ages it is entirely possible that big quakes do coincide with little ice ages.

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