A series of small earthquakes struck near the Salton Sea area overnight.
Nearly 20 micro-quakes
— the strongest measuring magnitude 3.3, with others much smaller —
struck the town of Niland near the eastern shore of the Salton Sea,
according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A magnitude 3.6 quake was
recorded near Salton City on the west side of the Salton Sea.
In September, a series of more than 200 small quakes hit the area. That prompted scientists to say for several days that there was an elevated risk for a big San Andreas fault earthquake. Many of the minor quakes were located under the sea itself.
The
Salton Sea is one of California’s most seismically complex areas. It is
located on a web of faults that scientists fear could one day wake up
the nearby San Andreas from its long slumber.
The Sinabung volcano erupted strongly in Indonesia on November 1, 2016.
And during the explosion some tornado-like vortices formed and amazed many witnesses and photographers.
The pyroclastic flow and ash devil (ash tornado) at Sinabung on November 1, 2016.
Now technically these aren’t tornadoes, even if they look like it.
Tornadoes are when a funnel cloud is connected to the ground at its
bottom and the base of a cumulonimbus cloud at its top. They form from
the top down, dropping from the cloud base.
But how do these ash vortices form?
In this case, though, the phenomena are built from the ground up. The
pyroclastic flow heats the air over the ground, causing it to rise. Air
from the sides then rushes in to fill the partial vacuum. This creates
swirls, which can get amplified into the vortices. This makes these
events more like a dust devil than proper tornadoes. Or, I suppose, an
ash devil.
The Sinabung volcanic eruption of November 1, 2016. via VK.com
Remember, that’s not just smoke you’re seeing; it’s vaporized rock,
millions of tons of it! And it’s superheated to glowing, which can then
flow downhill at hundreds of kilometers per hour, laying waste to
whatever it touches.
Nov 1 Sinabung eruption
Like I said, terrifying. Amazingly, though, volcanologists are
getting better at predicting these. Magma moving underground can cause
tremors that indicate an explosive eruption is imminent, allowing people
to be evacuated… Sometimes.
Meanwhile a smoke ring was photographed over the Etna, volcano in Italy on November 1, 2016.
There is a terrible beauty to volcano eruptions (much like hurricanes
seen from space) that belies their destructive power. This video
features a pyroclastic flow and ash devils at Sinabung in February 2014:
Mount Sinabung on Sumatra island erupts again. The volcano roared back
to life in 2010 for the first time in 400 years and erupted once more in
2013, it has remained highly active since.
October 2016 – ITALY – Italian
authorities said on Monday they were taking care of more than 15,000
people left homeless by the country’s most powerful earthquake in nearly
40 years. Although Sunday’s 6.6-magnitude
tremor did not result in any deaths, the third powerful quake in just
over two months has left thousands of homes in ruins or structurally
unsafe and emptied a string of villages and small towns across the
country’s mountainous central regions. The majority of residents of the
devastated villages and towns have taken refuge with friends and family
as they anxiously await a green light to return to their homes.
But the national civil protection
agency said on Monday it was providing assistance to 15,000 people
affected by Sunday’s quake, which was so powerful it caused cracks in
buildings in Rome, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) away from the
epicenter near the Umbrian town of Norcia. Some 4,000 people from the
worst-hit area around Norcia have been sent to hotels on the Adriatic
coast with another 500 taken by bus to the inland Lake Trasimeno. More
than 10,000 are being put up in converted sports halls and other
temporary facilities, including tents, across Umbria and the neighboring
Marche region, the protection agency said.
A further 1,100 people are still in
Adriatic coast hotels as a result of the August 24th Amatrice
earthquake, which left nearly 300 dead. Given the strength of Sunday’s
new quake, experts said it was remarkable that it had not resulted in
any more fatalities. With many roads blocked by landslips or huge
boulders dislodged by the quake, civil protection chief Fabrizio Curcio
and reconstruction supremo Vasco Errani were surveying the damage by
helicopter. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has vowed that every damaged
house will be rebuilt and that communities he described as part of “the
soul of the country” would not be abandoned. But after the trauma of
three major quakes in such quick succession, the future of the already
sparsely populated affected areas looks bleak.
“At the moment I don’t see any possible future,’ evacuated Norcia resident Antonella Ridolfi told AFP. “Everything
here will have to be rebuilt. There is nothing really solid left in the
center. We have always bounced back after other earthquakes but we’ve
never had to deal with one as strong as this.” – The Local
Planet X System Incoming: Birth Pangs (September 2016)
