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Monday, June 28, 2010

Earthquake Moved California City 31 Inches

San Andreas Fault in California.Image via Wikipedia

  • read more on news.yahoo.com
    The powerful earthquake that struck Baja California and the southwestern United States in April actually moved an entire California border city, NASA radar images show.
    Calexico, Calif., near the U.S.-Mexico border, moved as much as 2 1/2 feet (80 cm) south and down into the ground due to the magnitude-7.2 earthquake on April 4.
    Called the El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake, the temblor was centered 32 miles (52 km) south-southeast of Calexico and was the strongest quake to strike the region in nearly 120 years. Two people were killed and hundreds more were injured.
    Shaking and moving
    It's not the first time a town has moved. The massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile earlier this year moved the city of ConcepciĆ³n at least 10 feet (3 meters) to the west. That quake was the fifth most powerful temblor in recorded history.

  • read more on www.postchronicle.com

  • read more on news.yahoo.com
    NASA researchers are currently working to determine how far north the fault rupture that caused the quake may have reached.

  • read more on www.postchronicle.com
    Earthquake moved California city 31 inches (VIDEO) Data reveal the earthquake moved the Calexico, Calif., region in a downward and southerly direction approximately 31

  • read more on www.postchronicle.com

  • read more on www.postchronicle.com
    The newly released maps from NASA are hard to decipher, but are available here. (c) UPI

  • read more on earthquake.usgs.gov

    Q: Will California eventually fall off into the ocean?

    A: No. The San Andreas Fault System, which crosses California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, is the boundary between the Pacific Plate and North American Plate. The Pacific Plate is moving northwest with respect to the North American Plate at approximately 46 millimeters per year (the rate your fingernails grow). The strike-slip earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault are a result of this plate motion. The plates are moving horizontally past one another, so California is not going to fall into the ocean. However, Los Angeles and San Francisco will one day be adjacent to one another!
    For further information, see:
    Earthquakes, Megaquakes, and the Movies

  • California Island won't be popping up on any maps. Much of California does lie along the San Andreas Fault, an 800-mile fracture in the Earth's crust stretching from the Gulf of California to San Francisco. Here two immense plates of rock, floating on a semi-molten layer, meet and move against each other in what's called a strike-slip fault. The stress caused by this movement can result in devastating earthquakes, like the 1906 quake that destroyed much of San Francisco.

  • But the motion between these two rock masses beneath the Golden State is mostly horizontal. That is, the Pacific plate is moving "up" the coast, not away from the North American plate, at a rate of dozens of millimeters per year.
    So in several million years, residents of San Francisco will see the L.A. skyline out their

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