Lincolnshire's 'Rasen' Earthquake 2008


  Ice Notice at Belmont Tower epicentre

With the largest earthquake underneath British soil for some time, the racecourse town of Market Rasen found itself close to the epicentre, a 5.2 quake Feb 27th 2008, the local paper not really doing justice to the event. Not that there's that much to damage in the town. It was felt nationally with damage levels just below an emergency response. The Belmont Tv tower was perhaps the true center, but nothing was mentioned of the highest tower in Europe, despite Taipei101 having a rumble too, 'geologically' just prior to the Samoa Tsunami. It's 10 miles North of me at the head of the Bain valley in which Horncastle is situated, about 10 miles west of the 'UFO' incidents. The whole area is as mad as a goldfish in summer with schools of bikers travelling at 3 figure speeds to the International Racing circuit at Cadwell Park, in amongst the holiday caravanners and balloon tyre tractors of Lincolnshire.

Shaking
heavy chimneys on roof tops with slight dizzying special effect

The earthquake tremor itself literally kept my cottage in the air for 10 seconds. Worrying bits of masonry and flashing could be heard dancing down the roof from the chimneys and the taller house next door. The next few days the roads were chicanes around ladder trucks removing unsafe chimney pots. I had swept the back yard the day before the quake, the day after I had to do it again and was shocked to get 1/2 a dustbin of mortar, sand & brickdust. It occurred close to 2am, so I was expecting it to be a precursor to a larger quake at sunrise. In the week preceding there had been a lunar eclipse.
A few of us gathered in the street, and round on the market place a few cars parked together and their drivers talked excitedly. I walked around the town looking for damage, and found a sliver of sandstone mortar at the bottom of the church tower. When I got home I made sandwiches - the cupboard door knocking gently to a v.small, barely perceptable 'aftershock'. The news on the radio wasn't good and was talking of house collapse at Gainsboro' (turned out to be the chimney demolishing the better part of the property). My sister was on a night shift at the large several storied Queens Medical Centre in    Nottingham  and texted a few times, the whole place roaring to the tremor. Silly they should keep the Emergency Ambulances practically in any fall footprint of the buildings - had they have been needed they would have been all squashed.

Trade

Miraculously the antiques trade recieved very little damage - the rows of fine china figurine ladies hadn't danced off shelves; the lines of lead crystal and quartz victorian decanters sat just still enough; even the racks of condiment pots, thimbles, books and lampstands came through unscathed. The chimneys, some tall Tudor, alot massive Georgian and victorian, didn't fair so well, with the Lloyds building the worst hit with residents on holiday - the fire brigade taking away what was left of the old pots. The remainder being found in the rooms as the owners returned.

Funny

One of the funniest stories was told by a lady at a cafe a few days later. Apparently she'd had a new dishwasher installed on the day of the quake, and put it on for the first time before retiring to bed, awaking with the whole house shaking later in the night.
Skegness Jolly Fisherman arms outstretched with Skegness NEEDS bracing

Update: Chimney restoration work 01/04/09 ongoing on the 16ft monolith over my cottage in Horncastle. Luckily I'm a renter....

Officially the town recieved little damage, but one storey of scaffold costs £1,000 per week...The Co Op, Butcher's & Red Cross' Shops, five storey Restauraunt, Rodney Hotel, St. Mary's, Pet shop, Travel Agent, Health Food Shop, Old Hospital all needing weeks of quiet repair.


Earthquake Watching


Area Of Higher
Earthquake Danger!

 
Live Earth from Moon Actual moon phase Nasa image

Actual Distance at this scale
Moon would be 9 monitors away! --------->

If You Can See Your Lands, It Is Under The Moon -
Beware of Earthquakes.
If it is in Sunlight Aswell
Be Doubly Aware..


  Eclipse Times

Eclipses don't always mean earthquakes in the same way as getting run over by a Mack truck doesn't always mean a trip to the morgue. There is a chance that you'll keep out the way of everything and emerge Buster Keaton like unscathed. But in reality any list of Big Earthquakes shows a correlation to the forces of gravity exerted by the Sun and Moon. At eclipse these forces are doubled, playing straight through the Earth. When eclipse coincides with perigee (the closest approach of the wobbly Moon), every 4.25yrs., alot more volcanoes and quakes are likely to be triggered. Here in Lincs we had a 95% occlusion of the Sun
on the morning of Fri 20th Mar., the line following the Reykjaynes Ridge up the North Atlantic.

  Apogee - Perigee Times

Even the watery seas show a curious lag of a day or more between what is maximum gravity and the waters maximum heights. Magma acts in much the same way, and the lag between a heavenly body passing directly overhead, to a volcano blowing it's top (or a fault moving) can be up to a week. Thus blowing the proof of the statistics, at least for those with short attention spans. Occasionally a hotspot is so primed that it blows prematurely a lunar month, or few days before maximum gravity.

  Tide Times

Scientists seem to be forever measuring cracks and faults, their noses pressed to seismographs and charts, all the time claiming pre-diction isn't possible. Whilst every day quakes happen at Sunset, Moonset, Sunrise, Moonrise.... at Full Moon it's the moment a fault gets pulled perpendicularly open with the Sun one side and the Moon the other; at New Moon the Massifs get pulled by the combined gravities, so Capes, Islands and Bulky Mountains (vulcanics) are in more danger. And it isn't just predictable - it's obvious on infra-red as the hot wierd cloud and gas formations take shape over stressed areas. Composed of steam from the crystallisation water of the rocks, often giving stripes from the heating / cooling cycles, it is best seen through one of the Meteo Satellites..

Infa-Red Satellite
   World IR 

The Earthquake Cloud can be seen as hot spots - Salta in Argentina, the Tajik Kush, Guam are near ever presents. Occasionally a more ominous or intense plume can be seen from the hotspot, indicating fault break down. A quake is a near certainty when this is seen. Occasionally whole faults can be seen glowing in strait lines- it is often one of the ends that will give the quake. Little mattress   clouds or sometimes large plough patterns come from these faults (the Ceylon and Japanese sunburst flags), seeming to emanate from the area in danger, as wave after wave of steam is generated and released. These can be seen in normal photos and have been studied in China, along with things like animal behaviour, their government successfully giving warnings and evacuating cities before now.

  Visible Cloud


Earthquake mattress cloud
Earthquake Cloud at 53N
(As Grímsvötn Volcano blew in Iceland)

cartoon - Mr earth having it's arms yanked in opposite directions by Mr Sun and Mr Moon - creamcake like splits resulting

A Few Random Quakes..
  • 25.1.16, Gibraltar Straits 6.5, Perihelion Full Moon & Jupiter in same position as 2004 when hundreds killed here.
  • 27.10.15, Hindu Kush 7.7, Full Moon after twin Super Eclipses. Hundreds dead in several countries.
  • 16.9.15, Chile 8.3, New Moon, after first
    (S.Atlantic) eclipse, of two in a fortnight, 2nd at Perigee.
  •   13.2.15 Rare Atlantic 7.0 , New Moon before 2nd Perigee Solar Eclipse
  • 6.1 24/08/2014. San Francisco   Bay Area, USA. New Moon after Perigee.
  • 6.0 2012/05/20 Camposanto, Italy. Perigee Solar Eclipse, with Lunar eclipse to follow.
  • 9.0 11/3/11 NE Honshu, Japan. Between New Moon (7.2 foreshock) and Full Moon at Perigee.
  • 6.3 2011 Christchurch NZ. Full Moon before Perigee. Cyclone traversing Kermadec fault.
  • 7.0 Loma Prieta Earthquake, Fire, Tsunami, 1989 San Francisco (Full Moon, Perigee)
  • 8.3 US Samoa Earthquake, Tsunami, 2009
  • Canada Earthquake & Waves, Vancouver 1946 (Fortnight of Lunar & partial solar eclipses)
  • 7.4 Hebgen Lake, Montana 1959 Earthquake & Landslide (Full Moon before Lunar Eclipse)
  • Great Alaskan Earthquake, Tsunami 1964 (Full Moon before 3 eclipses in month)
  • 8.8 Chile Quake & Tsunami Feb 2010 (Full Moon)
  • Napier Hawkes Bay 7.8 Quake & Fire NZ 1931 (Full Moon before Perigee)
  • Mexico City 1985 Earthquake & Mini Tsunami (2nd New Moon after Perigee)
  • 7.9 Luzon Lindol July 16, 1990 (Week of total solar eclipse)
  • 1999 Turkish Earthquakes & Tsunami (week of Solar Eclipse)
  • Taiwan 9/21 7.5 Earthquake 1999
  • Kobe 1995 7+ Earthquake, Fire (Full Moon, Perihelion)
  • 2007 Pisco 8+ Peru Earthquake and Tsunami (New Moon before Lunar Eclipse)

news site screenshot of severe weather warning over earthquake headline

The odd quake that falls out of the regular tidal pattern quite possibly broke down and gave off steam - but the physical jolt took some time to squeeze out - either just caught on jagged rock, baulked by magma, or even an intense high pressure system.
Quite often a rapid barometric change can cause a quake on a fault - or allow one to happen that was waiting in the wings. Knowing if there's a big quake stored up is a matter of familiarising and reading up on the history of larger faults - or a quick search of a fault's/area's history. The places on a plate will fall like dominoes once one stretch has gone. After the Big Chile quake in '60, it was only a few weeks until the Kurils, then various other diverse Pacific places had their big quake, as the rotational stress was transfered, culminating in the Alaskan 9.2 of easter '64.
One of the best map images comes from 'time and date', and shows the position of the Sun and Moon. Generally if there's a fault between them, it'll be pulled open - usually resulting in movement.

  Sun / Moon Position

Triangulo de Vida

Many earthquake drills in the west include the 'drop, cover, hold' technique. Originally part of the Nuclear Survival code, it is particularly poor, and even dangerous to use during large earthquakes. The only survivors in collapsed buildings have been found in pockets formed by supporting furniture. Large stout old wooden, and metal safes and cabinets are strong enough to keep the cieling off should it collapse. Getting down next to these takes advantage of any pockets that may form. During one quake, the only natural spaces were next to and inbetween crushed desks, not underneath. Some of the worst injuries have been found in stair wells, where the stairs disengage and the risers become a large multiple buzz saw. Running outside into a rain of roof tiles and power cables isn't recommended anyway, whilst standing in doorways is only safe for mild quakes.

   Volcanoes 

Magma explosions generally relieve pressure, and their earthquake swarms are localised at such times. However, large volcanoes don't often erupt, but they do glow like LEDs on the IR map when their fault line is under strain, and are handy marks of just how much a line is suffering. Popacatlpetl is a good example, with the fault stretching to the bottom of the US New Madrid, and out to the 80's Mexico epicenter in the Pacific. If by a New Moon no quake action has relieved the hole, then some type of eruption is to be expected.


There are around ten earthquake stations for each continent, from various countries.
 RSS  Feeds are a customisable way of seeing how the Earth is shaping-up.

Addendum

The 9.0+ Japan earthquake of 3/11 was set up late 2010 with large movement at Taiwan, Ryukyu and West Guam, on three seperate occassions. The north pole moved suddenly from north Canada to Siberia - magnetite in Mongolia is being reseated northwards opening faults. The loss of ice at the poles is reshaping the area too. With the Pacific plate push then having uninterrupted access to East Japan, gradually the whole of Eastern Asia started  
glowing on infra-red
. This morning it was again prior to 4 x 6+ aftershocks.

small orbit rotation animated gif



Minor Earth tremor in the evening of Sat 4th March 2017 ; with a burst water Main on the Wold sunday morning, cutting off several villages.