Earthquake Weather Report for May-June 2013

In my last Earthquake Weather Report (for April/May 2013), I designated three window areas within which I felt, based on astrology, significant earthquakes (6.5 magnitude or greater) would be more likely to occur. These windows represented 40.3% of the time making up the month of May. Statistically, the most likely result would be that 1 or 2 such earthquakes would fall within these windows, but 3 occurred inside and one outside instead (those three quakes amounting to 1.86Xs the statistical average of 1.61 per month).

The results were thus rather successful in a fashion similar to my results in February 2013 (even down to there being an 8.0 magnitude or greater quake falling inside one of my windows of time). The expected average for 6.5 magnitude or greater earthquakes in a given month are 4 such quakes. This past month there were 4 such quakes, but they were exceptional in that the normal breakdown would be 3 quakes ranging from 6.5 to 7.0 and one remaining quake of 7.1 magnitude or larger. For May 2013, there was the rare 8.3 magnitude quake as well as a 7.4 magnitude event in that upper zone.

All of these were deep earthquakes (occurring under 70kms below the surface of the earth). Three of the four were at an exceptional 600kms or more in depth (the deepest events ever recorded were in the 620-651km range and these last three of magnitude 7.4 and 8.3 with a 6.7 aftershock were in the 601-623km range).

To further gauge the significance of the results, if one looks at the amount of energy released for earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or larger during the month of May 2013, one will find that 99.467% of it occurred within my windows and only 0.533% happened outside of those windows (or 187Xs more energy inside than out). In other words, the 6.8 magnitude quake that fell outside of the windows released approximately 1.0e+15 Joules of energy, while the three quakes within the windows that registered 6.7-8.3 magnitude released the equivalent of 1.86566e+17 Joules of energy.

As I brought up in a recent earthquake related hub, I am expecting an exceptionally large earthquake (8.0 magnitude or greater) in the New Guinea area and another potentially destructive earthquake in one of two locations off the east coast of Japan (roughly 7.0 magnitude, give or take 0.5 magnitude). This coming month may be when at least one of those quakes will occur and I am feeling that New Guinea is the more likely location if either is to happen in June 2013. At least astrological indicators point that way. I must admit that I have not been very successful at predicting earthquake locations on the face of the planet so far, but as I look more and more at the bigger picture, that should improve.

For June 2013, the number of windows now comes out to four (it was three the previous month as I stated earlier) and the amount of time that they encompass is approximately the same or 39.4% this time whereas it was 40.3% last time. Here is the new breakdown and possible epicenter locations:

2013-06--04 2300GMT +-7hrs in Indonesia, Ecuador, Italy, Turkey, Iran, Chile, China, Alaska, or California.

2013-06-08 2100GMT +-43hrs in Italy, China, Turkey, Peru, Venezuela, Jamaica, Alaska, California, Hawaii, or Kansas.

2013-06-24 0000GMT +-72hrs in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Armenia, or Alaska.

2013-06-30 0500GMT +-20hrs in Indonesia, China, Peru, Greece, Alaska, California, or Washington.

In closing, the map above represents a series of foreshocks to the 7.4 magnitude Tonga quake of May 23^rd. Notice how the smaller preshocks encircle the main shock and occurred 12-27 days prior. Recently I read that about 50% of all earthquakes of moderate to large size are preceded by a foreshock. Also, the same source ( ALARM SYSTEMS BASED ON A PAIR OF SHORT-TERM EARTHQUAKE PRECURSORS, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, August 1988 ) stated, based on another southern California study (Jones, 1985), that a single quake of at least 4.5 magnitude is 5% likely to be a foreshock (within a 5 day window). Since they also said that such a chance was only 2% for quakes of lesser magnitude (within a 2 day window), if we raise the bar to say earthquakes of a minimum magnitude of 5.5, that there may be something like a 10% likelihood of their being a main shock to follow. A page on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreshock ) states that for moderate to large earthquakes, foreshocks are present about 40% of the time and for 7.0 magnitude or greater quakes it is around 70% (a magnitude 5.5 event would be about the right size for a foreshock to a 7.0 magnitude main shock). They also stated that although most foreshocks occur within minutes or days of a main shock, it is not unheard of for there to be a much longer delay between the two, even by as much as two years (but that exceptionally early foreshock of 7.3 magnitude on November 2, 2002, was for an equally exceptional main shock of 9.1 magnitude on December 26, 2004).

Seismologists often say that after 5 days the chance of their being a linked main shock to a potential pre-shock greatly diminishes, but that may not necessarily be true if we are dealing with more than one possible pre-shock. As the number of potential pre-shocks increases, so too does the chance of a main shock following them.

I believe that an earthquake of 5.5 magnitude or greater, especially when linked to other similar sized quakes over the course of days or weeks, should be seen as a time to be alert for a much larger event and thus one should not let ones guard down after a window of a few days afterwards. Under such a multi-quake scenario, other possible indicators for a possible larger quake should be sought out (such as any unusual changes in the level of radon gas in well water, magnetic or RF wave anomalies, and strange animal behavior to name a few). What was just presented in these last few paragraphs will again be reviewed and expanded on in a future hub.

Copyright © 2013 Joseph W. Ritrovato