Alaskan Earthquake

[akeagle]

I don't know if any of you will find this interesting, but after the 7.0 earthquake in Anchorage this morning, many of our Facebook friends in the Lower-48 asked what it was like. After thinking about it for a while this is what I came up with:

It was like being in a motorhome at speed on the worst washboard and potholed road with all the attendant noise, shaking, shuddering, rattling, swaying, and things falling from shelves and cabinets.


That's what it was like in the house for the better part of a minute. I'm happy to report there was no damage to the house, but there was a whole lot of pickup to do from the stuff shaken off the walls and shelves.

Going to visit Winnie tomorrow to make sure she rode it out ok.

 

[amullis]

I don't know if any of you will find this interesting, but after the 7.0 earthquake in Anchorage this morning, many of our Facebook friends in the Lower-48 asked what it was like. After thinking about it for a while this is what I came up with:

It was like being in a motorhome at speed on the worst washboard and potholed road with all the attendant noise, shaking, shuddering, rattling, swaying, and things falling from shelves and cabinets.


That's what it was like in the house for the better part of a minute. I'm happy to report there was no damage to the house, but there was a whole lot of pickup to do from the stuff shaken off the walls and shelves.

Going to visit Winnie tomorrow to make sure she rode it out ok.

Wishing you and the rest of Alaska well! The best news is that nobody lost their life in this one!

 

[RD Eagle]

Glad to hear no one lost their life in this one. Glad you are ok hope the Winnie made it thru ok. Our heart goes out to you all there.

 

[akeagle]

Checked Winnie today. No casualties except the milkhouse heater to add a little load when running the generator had tipped over. No harm and no foul!

 

[Sarah_W]

Glad you, your home and RV are all OK. Seems like we're having one disaster after another lately.

 

[akeagle]

We're the "improvise, adapt, and overcome" type of people. We dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew with the same attitude and everything turned out fine.

Interestingly, after Andrew we stopped in northern Indiana where we were both born and raised, we were interviewed by a local newspaper reporter who seemed a bit frustrated that we were upbeat and not playing the "oh whoa is me" role she was expecting. The interview wasn't published. No biggie!!! If you notice, most media seem to push hard to portray people as victims. If they say "I thought I was going to die", it guarantees publication. Kind of funny in a way.

Ok, I'll stop talking non-RV stuff now.

 

[Morich]

This is one of those areas that can be so interesting that I can' avoid thinking about it. But it is also such a touchy political issue that I hesitate to even mention it!
So, please, consider this to be an interest and not an open invitation to political argument?
I like to stay with the obvious facts and let the rest rest, okay?
So we know that the earth is not round,but more like a squished basketball with the Equator being larger. Kind of like a marshmellow with a soft inner core, perhaps, covered by the hard shell and the earth rotation making it swell out as the caps at both ends press down?
So as the ice at both poles melts and becomes deeper water spread around the world in different places, does the earth gradually reshape itself with earthquakes becoming more frequent?
I have a handy group of college folks who love to set around and debate this sort of spacey thinking and the majority seem to lean toward the future looking pretty grim for the grandchildren! Hang on folks, the ride could get bumpy!!

 

[Sarah_W]

Ok, I'll stop talking non-RV stuff now.

Talk all you want; I moved this thread to the Lifestyle section where open discussions are encouraged.

 

[akeagle]

Very interesting theory and worthy of further thought. I have no formal education in geology but I've been very interested in it since I was a kid. I agree that water weight definitely could be a factor on the earth's crust, especially as the ice turns to water and flows to the sea. the question might be will that water tend to make its way to the equator, or will it fill the oceans equally? I'll let the people who know a lot more about that kind of stuff wrestle with it!

 

[Morich]

Whether it will fill equally is already working out to not be true as the East Coast of the US is getting more quicker than other areas. It's slipping up on lots of folks sooner than they are willing to accept but if we look at what is being done beyond the research, it shows. The shipyards in Norfolk have been worried for years but since federal and state governments are slow to move, much of it is left to the cities to figure out what to do to try to save themself. With so much of it is online now that we can do a lot of study without even moving out of the house if we dig a bit. Florida is a place I go quite a lot, so it is natural to look there for info, but not on the national or state level. If interested in knowing the moves being made, do a bit of search and it is pretty easy to find what Miami Beach is spending to try to build their roads and other vital things up. But then it could be said that they are just worry warts and like to spend money so I like to get a bigger view and search for more places and what small spots which are also vulnerable are doing. Satellite Beach is a small town on an island on the East Coast of Florida, so I did a search for "Satellite Beach rising water"to get some idea of what they know.
This is one item that catches my attention:
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/...com/&httpsredir=1&article=1008&context=gisday
But then I am almost addicted to looking at real estate and Zillow is one quick/easy spot to get info and they show me how the local real estate is not moving up as quickly when it is near the water!
Not something I can change at my level but it does prove out to be a big help if I know where not to retire! Little things like knowing Miami Beach is working to build the streets up but the yards are still the same level? That's going to ruin the real estate value. Twenty years from now won't be bothering me but my son in Huntington Beach, Ca is beginning to look around a bit more! I won't be improving any property in downtown Houston as they are getting the double swammy of sinking while the water is rising!
https://www.chron.com/news/article/New-app-shows-exactly-where-Houston-is-sinking-11300108.php

 

[Sarah_W]

Very interesting theory and worthy of further thought. I have no formal education in geology but I've been very interested in it since I was a kid. I agree that water weight definitely could be a factor on the earth's crust, especially as the ice turns to water and flows to the sea. the question might be will that water tend to make its way to the equator, or will it fill the oceans equally? I'll let the people who know a lot more about that kind of stuff wrestle with it!

Water seeks it's own level. It will not "make its way to the equator", but will rise everywhere.

 

[Sarah_W]

I won't be improving any property in downtown Houston as they are getting the double swammy of sinking while the water is rising!
https://www.chron.com/news/article/New-app-shows-exactly-where-Houston-is-sinking-11300108.php

Houston "sinking" was the end result of pumping ground water at increasing rates over the years. The growing population of Harris County meant that water was pumped from the ground wells at increasing rates for years, causing subsidence. Since the 1980s there have been infrastructure projects, building canals and routing water from rivers to Lake Houston to provide drinking water.

 

[Morich]

Water seeks it's own level. It will not "make its way to the equator", but will rise everywhere.

This was the expected thing but as we get more and more accurate data, it is not proving to be what is happening. Even when we look at it on a small scale like the East and West coasts of the US, we find it rising at different rates. Part of it is the difference in temperatures of the various places and those where the water is warmer, rise is often greater.
That temperature difference is another of the "big picture" thoughts that I like to study as it has such a large effect on the weather. Being a former weather guy, I am still interested in how the slowing of some of the major currents will change the weather. Not to mention lots of other things that we don't even begin to think about!
What happens when the current that goes up along the coast of Japan, turning when it reaches the ice pack and going back South to keep the water off Washington and Oregon cool, begins to get slow enough that it no longer cools Washington down to the middle of California? We know that we can now begin to send ships across the North side of Canada as the ice gets thinner, so is it not logical that there will be a point when the ocean current no longer turns to go South but begins to allow more and more of it to come out in the Atlantic rather than the Pacific? That will certainly mess with the salmon runs in the West and the Maine lobster in the East.

 

[Sarah_W]

The earth is in a constant state of change and has been since the beginning of time. Climate changes are ongoing and take place over centuries, so most of us will be long gone before the sky falls.

 

[Morich]

The earth is in a constant state of change and has been since the beginning of time. Climate changes are ongoing and take place over centuries, so most of us will be long gone before the sky falls.

Climate changes have always taken place over centuries but when I go to Galveston state park and look at it now versus what it was 20 years ago, I go ask the local park people what's happening to the campground and trails. When you can see the water coming up into the campground and look at it on Google Earth, it's good enough to make me believe.
Any of you folks on the sidelines but interested, do a bit of looking to see what I mean? Look up Galveston Island State Park and locate the "Clapper Rail Trail" to give it a good look. Locate the trail where it is laid out on the map and then ask why so much of it is underwater. Locate the driveways to the campgrounds on the bay side and see the drives are breaking up because the ground is now so saturated it won't hold up. If you get closer sometime, take a look along the gulf side and ask why they put the trash barrels hanging on posts out in the water.
We don't have to be real "big brain" types to get a few answers, do we?
The proposed "Ike dike" to keep the water back is calculated at $15 billion dollars!

 

[Morich]

I know this can be a sore point and it has gotten way too political but then it doesn't have to be that way if we simply look at what we can really see. To me, seeing things on Google Maps, moves it out of the political "spin" and into what the camera shows.
So I keep in mind that Galveston bay is directly connected to the Gulf and that makes the water level pretty close to sea level in the area.
So a quick look at sea level and how it has changed in a very short period?
Going to Google Maps and searching for "Galveston Kayak Outfitter" and looking at the satellite view will show you what has happened to this small business.
I had not been to the park in a number of years and I was totally shocked. The rangers estimate they will have no park in ten years!

 

[Sarah_W]

No one is arguing that changes are occurring; that has been the story of our planet forever. I live near Galveston Bay and with each hurricane or major storm the coastline of the Gulf changes.

And to return to the topic of the thread, I hope things are returning to some normalcy in Alaska.

 

[Morich]

The point now is not whether there are changes but that those changes which used to take hundreds of years are now occurring at a much faster rate and that does very much relate to Alaska, as it is one of the places where the temperatures and the water rise is coming so much faster than in other places.
My thinking is not to debate whether it is happening but to look at how best to prepare for the future. Whether it involves doing more to prevent damage from more frequent earthquakes, moving away from the more dangerous spots, or simply not investing in the areas near the coast is a decision we will all have to make.
Most of us are not looking closely at what is happening and think of weather changes as being a flat line type thing where weather gradually gets warmer and those changes are decades if not centuries away. But anyone who thinks about what they knew and lived through fifty years ago can certainly spot things that have changed in that short lifetime. When you grew up, if you lived in the country, you likely heard quail calling and thought it normal. There is a connection between there not being very many quail and having fire ants moving into Texas! I grew up in Missouri and there were no armadillo, roadrunners, or tarantula but we now see them in the Branson area every year.
Changes are coming and they are coming fast!
So the choice is to prepare or choose to ignore?
But while deciding which way to go, don't bother going down to NASA and have a picnic at Peninsula Park as the park is flooded!

 

[akeagle]

The old joke about conned into buying beachfront property in Arizona may not be a joke in the not-to-distant future!

 

[akeagle]

Another angle to be considered in coastal sea levels is plate tectonics. As I recall, there are virtually no major plate boundaries on or near the East coast. Thus the change in sea level there will be primarily due to the melting of glaciers. The west coast of course has always been seismic but the earthquakes tend to be the side slip variety - not to diminish their severity one bit - which generally don't cause significant coastal elevation changes. Alaska, on the other hand, is where the Pacific Plate is thrusting under the North American Plate from the panhandle to the Alaska mainland and westward to the tip of the Aleutian Islands. That subduction causes huge earthquakes that also causes land elevation changes. The 9.2 Alaska earthquake caused elevation changes in places up to 30 feet, both plus and minus. Oh well, places like Alaska will probably never have big population centers primarily due to the climate, which is actually warming, but a lot of people will never move here because of the earthquake potential. Overall though, your concern about coastal sea level change is certainly valid, regardless of location. Climate change deniers are whistling their way past the graveyard.