Skip to content

Sixty-Three Earthquakes Near Bodie Last Night!

earthquakes-bodie-creek-aurora-bridgeport-hawthorneThe USGS reports 63 earthquakes between Bridgeport and Hawthorne last night, clustered around Bodie Creek, north of the historic town sites of Aurora and Bodie. The earthquakes included two of magnitude 5.7 and one of 5.5, in an area about 10 miles downstream from the town of Bodie, California.

By coincidence I was editing this sunset photo from Hawthorne last night, captured on my way back from Utah last month. Walker Lake is important for migrating and nesting birds such as pelicans, but in recent years the lake level dropped significantly due to excessive diversions for agriculture. All fish including the Lahontan Cutthroat trout living in the lake have died as the lake level dropped and the lake’s mineral content and alkalinity rose. It is still used for water by bighorn sheep in the neighboring mountains.

One of the largest employers in Hawthorne is the U.S. Army, which stores and dismantles old bombs and ammunition there. How would you like to be working on a 700-pound bomb during a 5.7 earthquake?

#Nevada #landscapephotography #Hawthorne #walkerlake

Comments

10 thoughts on “Sixty-Three Earthquakes Near Bodie Last Night!”

  1. 虹のような美しい空と山々🎶、湖面に映し出されて素晴らしい自然の風景に感動しました❗💞
    とてもワクワクします、嬉しい気持ち、楽しい気持ち、明るい未来を感謝しています🎵
    素晴らしい自然の風景をありがとうございます💞
    今年も残り少なくなりました、笑顔のある数日をお過ごしください。
    そして、楽しい新年を迎えてください😊

    I sincerely Thank you💕

  2. +Jason West I've seen drill rigs in the area, but I suspect they're for mineral exploration, since there are many gold mines nearby.

    Nevada's "basin and range" topography is shaped by blocks rising (ranges) or dropping (basins) as the Pacific Pate moves northward relative to the North American Plate. These recent earthquakes are in the Walker Land Belt:
    "In eastern Nevada, the relative motion is about 1/6 of an inch (4 mm) per year westward. The Sierra Nevada block is moving about 0.5 inch (12 mm) per year to the northwest. The Walker Lane belt is a northwest-trending region in western Nevada and eastern California of diverse orientations of mountain ranges and faults, many strike-slip faults, and high relative levels of background earthquake activity. The Walker Lane belt, is a transition zone between the strike-slip plate boundary system and extensional tectonics of the Basin and Range province. The belt contains many strike-slip faults and has had major strike-slip earthquakes, such as the 1932 Cedar Mountain earthquake (magnitude 7.1). Western Nevada appears to have a higher earthquake hazard than the rest of the state because of the strike-slip activity in addition to the normal-slip faults."

    Living with Earthquakes in Nevada: A Nevadan's guide to preparing for, surviving, and recovering from an earthquake
    http://crack.seismo.unr.edu/ep/nvguide/sbg2.html

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Loading Facebook Comments ...