Geo Doom

First off,many thanks to those of you who filled out the survey for Andrew Pennell.

Andrew is doing a thesis on how people in the USA prepare for severe weather. He told me the other night that the city of Abilene, Texas has done away with their weather sirens and told folks to go out and buy a NOAA weather radio. (see my blog on screaming sirens).

Well some huge news in the Geological world. It seems a new tectonic plate has been found. Guess where? Tokyo! This is probably bad news for the world's most earthquake prone megalopolis. Tokyo has a 90% chance of a massive earthquake within 50 years. The last big one in the 1920's killed 140,000 people.

Tectonic plates are portions of the earth's crust that "sit" on the mantle rocks below and these tectonic plates slowly move. Here, in the Tennessee Valley, we are on the North American plate. It is moving W at about 1-4 cm per year. About as fast as your finger nails grow. Still in the ten years I have lived in Huntville my house has moved westward about a foot! (so has your's!)

Plate tectonics is really fascianting and even more amazing is the fact that it was only accepted as a working theory by Geologists around 1960! I mean really! Look at a global map and you can see that South America and Africa were once connected... right???

If you want to see what the world map looked like over the last 200 million years, then check out this web site.

Another bit of Geo doom for you. The La Palma Volcano, in the Azores, is in danger of losing it's side into the Atlantic. Some UK researchers made big news last year with calculations that this would cause a huge tsunami that would affect the East coast of the North America.

Other Geologists have pointed out that the collapse will probably not happen all at once and thus a mega tsunami is very unlikely.

Still if I am on the beach in North Carolina some Summer and I hear something on the radio about the Azores and a volcano...I'm gonna run like Speedy Gonzales to high ground.

Later,
Dan