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Profile / Raison d'etre

Hi, my name is Mike.

At 4:08 am 14 March 2005 a 6.4 ML earthquake struck 80 km south of Opunake, Taranaki in the South Taranaki Bight, 130km North West from my home at Raumati Beach, Kapiti.

The Geonet Report was as follows; "The 150 km depth of the earthquake meant that only minor damage was caused by an event of this magnitude. It was too deep to cause a rupture in the earth's crust directly under the sea floor, hence there was no likelihood of a tsunami being generated. However, due to its size and depth, it was felt over a very wide area, with strongest shaking detected by our instruments along a line between Paraparaumu and Porirua. This is a common phenomenon with deep events on the North Island subduction zone - the strongest shaking is felt to the south-east of the epicentre where it intersects a line from East Cape to Blenheim. This is because the energy that is released by the earthquake propagates more efficiently up the denser subducting Pacific plate, rather than the overlying Australian plate".

Thus began my interest in tracking earthquake activity, both here in New Zealand and also Worldwide. At 1:15 am on the 16 February 2006 a 6.0ML earthquake struck 20km SW of the location of the 2005 quake ...... I was hooked.

Note on Earthquake Reporting:

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the international time standard. It is the current term for what was commonly referred to as Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT). Zero (0) hours UTC is midnight in Greenwich England, which lies on the zero longitudinal meridian. Universal time is based on a 24 hour clock, therefore, afternoon hours such as 4 pm UTC are expressed as 16:00 UTC (sixteen hours, zero minutes).

Consequently, as NZ is 12-13 hours ahead of UTC, my initial reporting dates for earthquakes within NZ may be out of wack as to the actual date if based on UTC. I will re-date/re-position such reports the next day, to match with UTC.

Earthquake Magnitude:

The magnitude of an earthquake is the measurement of an earthquake's energy. When the magnitude of an earthquake increases by one step, its energy increases by a factor of 32. If the magnitude increases by two steps, the energy increase is a factor of 32 times 32 - approximately 1,000

chart showing colour coding of earthquakes on this Blog, click to see larger image

On my World Maps I colour the Earthquake dot to show the MB or ML size. Where possible the size is shown as reported by the local countries Geology Dept or University, which in some cases may vary from the USGS or the EMSC Network sites, or which ever is closest. In some cases the USGS and EMSC do not agree as to the exact size ie EMSC may report 5.8mb while USGS may report 6.0mb. In this case I have used the highest reported reading.
Earths Tectonic Plates and Active Volcanoes:

sketch by Ellen Lougae, USGS. click to see larger image

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Sunday, December 31, 2006
Moving On

Well thats it for 2006.
In 2006 my Blog has changed name once, background colour once, changed focus a few times, I have added various new features, done lots of research and I have sure learned a lot about earthquakes and other places in the world.

I have learned more about my own country, New Zealand, as well, doing the more detailed maps in the latter half of the year, coming across place names that I had never heard of before, and visited some more familiar places I know well that keep cropping up in the earthquake lists.

I hope those who have viewed this Blog have enjoyed the ride, it is unfortunate that due to Spammers I had to write in the html code a blocker so that the Comments feature and right clicking did not work here, that is the price we seem to have to pay to keep these idiots from ruining what is just a hobby.

At this point in time I have decided to change the background again and re vamp the maps I use for New Zealand, having found on the www a site where I can zoom in and out and take a snap shot of various areas which show the detailed geography quite well, these are the type I have been trialing since 1st December on the swarm maps.

Rather than let this Blog run on I have started 2 new Blogs, which will load faster (I hope) initially;

one using the same template with a few tweeks added called 40.910south.
I hope you will join me there, click on the logo below for the link;

the other on a different platform using Wordpress, called
40.9103swarm , which is a bit more restrictive on what I can alter to suit my needs, but seems safe enough to enable Comments.
I am using this one to do the Swarm's of Quakes at this stage, but it could go anywhere.....
I hope you will join me there as well, click on the logo below for that link;

I will keep the pictures and maps on this Blog hosted for as long as I can as there are some nice ones there,

So thanks for looking in on me in 2006, hope you all have a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Best Regards,
Mike (highace)

# Posted by Muzzy at 6:04 PM

NZ Regional EQ Report for December 31st 2006 UTC