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Temblors

Munjibunga

Munjibunga

Total Hyper-Elite Member
May 6, 2000
37,499
14,776
San Diego (when not at Groom Lake)
#1
OK, folks. I have been a geologist for well over 30 years, and never once have I heard another geologist refer to an earthquake as a temblor. We call them ... earthquakes. It's those danged pantywaist newsreaders that discovered that word in some thesaurus, and think it sounds scientific.

That is all.
 
#2
No kidding Munj? I'm a geologist too! [secret handshake] Nevada...are you in mining?

And yeah, I call them earthquakes too. That's what we called them in college. That's what the USGS calls them. That's what Cal Tech calls them. The only time I see "temblor" is in the newspaper.
 
#5
Munjibunga said:
OK, folks. I have been a geologist for well over 30 years, and never once have I heard another geologist refer to an earthquake as a temblor. We call them ... earthquakes. It's those danged pantywaist newsreaders that discovered that word in some thesaurus, and think it sounds scientific.

That is all.
Click to expand...

Ohhhhhhh the irony, 21k posts of randomness at others threads and now you get pissed at some guys calling your earth shakes temblors :D
 
#6
From the latin, the word "temblor" is recognized world-wide as earthquakes.

BTW, with quake activity in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, not to mention the Iceland volcano popping off, do you think that we are in an era of relatively high seismic activity?

Should I be worried about San Andreas finally cooking off? There have been a whole slew of unexplained water main breaks all over the city of Los Angeles over the past year. Skin stretching?

-richard
 
#8
Growing up in San Francisco, I learned the word "temblor" early, as news media tried to say "we had an earthquake" in some different way each time. Seems like "temblor" was used at least a quarter of the time.
vene-nemesis said:
Ohhhhhhh the irony, 21k posts of randomness at others threads and now you get pissed at some guys calling your earth shakes temblors :D
Click to expand...
^^^^ +1,000,000!
 
#11
StyleOverShow said:
From the latin, the word "temblor" is recognized world-wide as earthquakes.

BTW, with quake activity in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, not to mention the Iceland volcano popping off, do you think that we are in an era of relatively high seismic activity?

Should I be worried about San Andreas finally cooking off? There have been a whole slew of unexplained water main breaks all over the city of Los Angeles over the past year. Skin stretching?

-richard
Click to expand...

The San Andreas is SO 1980's. :p Now, it's all about the Puente Hills Fault or some other not-yet-identified blind thrust fault.
 
#13
StyleOverShow said:
From the latin, the word "temblor" is recognized world-wide as earthquakes.

BTW, with quake activity in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, not to mention the Iceland volcano popping off, do you think that we are in an era of relatively high seismic activity?

Should I be worried about San Andreas finally cooking off? There have been a whole slew of unexplained water main breaks all over the city of Los Angeles over the past year. Skin stretching?

-richard
Click to expand...

Recognized, but not used by geologists.

As for the water main breaks, how old are they? Some in San Diego are almost 100 years old against a 50-year design life. I suspect L.A. has similar problems. Also, the San Andreas doesn't run under L.A. You're biggest problems are the blind thrusts right under the city, like the Elysian Park Fault.

The 1994 Northridge Earthquake occurred on one. I was a consultant on a partially collapsed appartment complex in Northridge that experienced nearly 1g of vertical acceleration in addition to similar horizontal acceleration. Structures aren't designed to weigh twice as much as their static weight, but they are designed to resist cyclic lateral loading, to an extent.

Regarding the San Andreas, it's overdue in the southern section (San Berdoo south). It's been over 350 years since that section popped off, with an average 150-year recurrence interval. Something in the M7.5 to M8 range would have nasty repercussions for pretty much all of southern California.

I'm thinking we're likely to have a significant earthquake in Imperial Valley in the next few years, either on the San Jacinto system or Elsinore fault. There has been a LOT of seismic activity just south of the Mexican border over the last two or three years.

Finally, as Lucy Jones of the USGS says, "When you're having a lot of earthquakes, you tend to have a lot of earthquakes."
 
#15
At first I thought you were referring to *trembleurs*
trembleur07.jpg
 
#16
bassteban said:
At first I thought you were referring to *trembleurs*
trembleur07.jpg
Click to expand...

I for one welcome our new alien overlords.








(Munji, I agree, it's frustrating, and I'm not a geologist, nor do I live in an earthquake prone area - although we do have them [very small] on rare occasions. I get really irritated at the media types trying to sound all "informed" by using unusual words to describe common events. :spit: ])
 
#20
Munjibunga ... knows all, sees all. We were having Easter dinner at my in-laws, and it shook for over 30 seconds. I immediately knew it was big (by the duration) and far away (by the lack of damage and the time separation between the first arrivals of the P and S waves). My first guess was M6.5 to M7.0.
 

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