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Earthquake NE of Dekalb


danman31

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QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 08:19 AM)
Balta, could you be kind enough to explain how the epicenter was in Sycamore? I had no idea a fault line ran this close to me

First, updated magnitude = 3.8. So that ought to give those who felt it an idea of the power we're talking about when we start getting to magnitude 5/6; that's 100x or 1000x more powerful.

 

The reason for noting that first is...it doesn't take a major fault to create a magnitude 3.8 event. Most of the world goes through events this scale every few hundred years because of settling/compaction; as you pile stuff on top of rocks, or you take stuff off (i.e. melt a large ice sheet) you slightly change the stress field. It only takes a small bit of re-adjustment and cracking, probably only of a few tens to hundreds of meters of rock, to give you an event of this size. If you dug down to the exact epicenter, you probably wouldn't even notice anything you'd call a fault line.

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Epicenter was basically underneath the very small town of Virgil. My parents live about 5 miles east of there, north of Elburn. They thought there had been an explosion.

 

I live in the city, and I remember waking up at 4am, and wondering why I was awake. I thought I heard something strange, but then it was gone, and I drifted back off.

 

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 07:50 AM)
First, updated magnitude = 3.8. So that ought to give those who felt it an idea of the power we're talking about when we start getting to magnitude 5/6; that's 100x or 1000x more powerful.

 

The reason for noting that first is...it doesn't take a major fault to create a magnitude 3.8 event. Most of the world goes through events this scale every few hundred years because of settling/compaction; as you pile stuff on top of rocks, or you take stuff off (i.e. melt a large ice sheet) you slightly change the stress field. It only takes a small bit of re-adjustment and cracking, probably only of a few tens to hundreds of meters of rock, to give you an event of this size. If you dug down to the exact epicenter, you probably wouldn't even notice anything you'd call a fault line.

I do know there is a fault further SW of there, around Dixon, that occasionally produces 4+ quakes. But that's at least 50 miles away.

 

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bizarre - i went to sleep around 1:30/2ish so i guess i was dead to the world around 4:15... shame. I always miss these things. haha.

 

although with my downstairs neighbor and the copious bass he pumping right now... i wouldn't be able to feel a mag 7 let alone 3.8...

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QUOTE (Nyx81 @ Feb 10, 2010 -> 09:07 PM)
I'm confused (not hard) but I thought the quake early this morning was near DeKalb, more in the western suburbs. Were there two quakes?

USGS revised their epicenter after further analysis. Original one was 5 miles east of Sycamore, around the small town of Virgil. They are now saying the epicenter is just behind a farm house at the intersection of Plank and Mulihead roads, in the Plato Center area.

 

Interestingly, the Trib interviewed the people who live there, and the other ones across the street. One of them said they could have sworn they felt something similar a couple nights earlier as well.

 

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