Earthquake swarm strikes Yellowstone
Story available at: billingsgazette.com
Published on Sunday, May 06, 2007. Last modified on 5/6/2007 at
1:36 pm |
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK -
Sixteen small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 shook the park's Pitchstone
Plateau last week.
The quakes were detected by seismographs operated by
the University of Utah and partners.
They began Monday, just before
midnight. The largest occurred at 3:09 a.m. Tuesday and the quakes continued
until Wednesday, according to Bob Smith, a University of Utah
professor.
"I was up working and watching these, saying 'Whoa, what does
this all mean?'" he said. "It kept my interest quite high."
The quakes
occurred on the southern edge of a volcano caldera at the center of Yellowstone.
The volcano last erupted 70,000 years ago.
Smith said earthquake swarms
are common in Yellowstone. As many as 70 swarms of small earthquakes have
occurred in the region between 1983 and 2006.
No one likely felt the most
recent quakes, Smith said.
Original article: Worthy News
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