I created earthquakes….You can too!

Earthquakes are part of life in Southern California. On any given day there can be several hundred earthquakes, most of them magnitude 2.0 or smaller. Those between magnitude 3.0 and 3.9 are usually called “small tremblors” or “shaking.” Not until they reach 4.0 do they make the headline news.

A couple of days ago when I was at the Mission Trails Regional Park Visitor Center, I found a real time, streaming earthquake display:

That shows any number of earthquakes in real time being detected by the ANZA Seismic Network. ANZA has dozens of seismic stations throughout Southern California and is operated by the University of California at San Diego. It uses state-of-the-art broadband and strong motion sensors with 24-bit data loggers combined with real-time telemetry to monitor seismicity.

The station at the Visitor Center is so sensitive that stomping your foot can “create” an earthquake. I created two of them, which you can see as two spikes on the first data line in the upper right-hand corner. Here’s a close-up of my two earthquakes:

I had to wait in line because there were a bunch of children creating their earthquakes. Then I had to let all of their earthquakes get off the data line so that my earthquakes would show clearly.

The Visitor Center at Mission Trails Regional Park has to be one of the best visitor centers anywhere! I’ll have more about the Visitor Center and the Park in future posts.

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