Parkfield earthquake is a name given to various large earthquakes that occurred in the vicinity of the town of Parkfield, California, United States. The San Andreas fault runs through this town, and six successive magnitude 6 earthquakes occurred on the fault at unusually regular intervals, between 12 and 32 years apart (with an average of every 22 years), between 1857 and 1966.
The most recent significant earthquake to occur here happened on September 28, 2004.
Earthquakes may occur regularly here because the location is about midway on a fault segment between a locked segment to the south (last major earthquake 1857) and a creeping segment to the north where two tectonic plates are continuously moving without major earthquakes.
Read more about Parkfield Earthquake: Predictions, Research, Analysis, Aftershocks, Recent Developments, Fort Tejon Earthquake
Famous quotes containing the word earthquake:
“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)