It appears a 4.5 magnitude earthquake has struck in the Gulf of Mexico, off the shores of the Panhandle of Florida.
(thanks to Annie G. for reporting this!)
I would call this a fairly noteworthy event, considering we don’t normally see much movement along the Gulf of Mexico salt dome complexes (a location of the strategic petroleum reserves).
Also worthy to note in light of the “strange rumbles” felt in New Jersey yesterday.
However, despite the event showing on the feeds, the USGS might be playing politics by not reporting it. The earthquake epicenter falls near several offshore oil / gas well platforms, as well as an area which plays into national security.
Earthquake information for this event comes from:
http://anf.ucsd.edu/recenteqs/
| Latitude | 29.7509 |
|---|---|
| Longitude | -86.3526 |
| Magnitude | 4.5 mb |
| Depth | 15 km |
| UTC Time | 12:33:55 October 30th, 2014 UTC |
| Location | Gulf Of Mexico, Eastern North America |
| Author | teleMb |
| Review status | – |
A view from google earth shows the epicenter to be approximately 44miles SW of Panama City, FL.
The earthquake occurred approximately 110 miles NE of the major salt dome region in the Northern Gulf of Mexico, which was the location of the BP oil spill in 2010.
Who is the ANF?
About The ANF
The Array Network Facility component of the EarthScope USArray project is charged with ensuring all the real–time data and metadata collected from the Transportable and Flexible Arrays (TA & FA) are transmitted, checked for quality, archived, and accessible online for researchers and the general public. We also ensure near real–time delivery of the data and metadata to the deep archive located at the IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) in Seattle, Washington.
Stations
The USArray project is deploying a series of portable broadband seismic stations across the continental United States over the years 2004 – 2013. The stations are deployed for approximately two years and deployment started in 2004 on the western side of the United States. The network migrates eastwards, reusing components from previously deployed stations (click here to see the currently deployed stations or click here to see the monthly temporal evolution of the network). From 2014 – 2017 the stations will be deployed in Alaska (see Fig. 1 below for the planned sites).
Figure 1. The plannned Alaska USArray Transportable Array station sites for the time period 2014 – 2017. (Click image to see larger version)Vault Design
The vault design is evolving as the network moves eastwards. Currently it consists of a broadband sensor (such as a Streckheisen STS-2 or a Nanometrics Trillium), assorted other instrumentation (such as infrasound and meterological sensors), a Quanterra Q330 digitizer, a solar panel(s) and backup battery to provide power, a bilge pump in case of water leaks, a Vault Interface Enclosure (VIE), foam insulation, and a communications link to transfer data in near time (such as a cellular phone connection or VSAT) to the ANF. Below is a schematic diagram of the vault design.
Figure 2. Schematic Transportable Array station vault cross section, version 2.(Click image to see larger version)
We have developed a series of online tools to help station engineers, analysts, researchers and the public determine the quality and status of the data returned from the deployed stations.
Research
Learn about the research we are undertaking with the data from this experiment.
- Inframet: Seismic and infrasound & meterological data correlations
Subprojects
- Central and Eastern United States Network (CEUSN)
- The Cascadia subproject
- The Chile broadband network
- The Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network (GLISN)
More information
Realtime archiving of the data is through the IRIS DMC, facilitated by use of SDSC’s SRB resource
The ANF component of the USArray experiment is funded by the National Science Foundation.