Crisis of Confidence for the Euro

As the can tumbles down the road, we are now hearing that the Euro is showing signs of some deeper issues developing. At first the Euros flowed from the troubled nations to the core now the capital flows are outward, from the Euro to outside currency havens.

 

The Euro has lost 8% against the dollar just since May. For many that might not seem too large but in the currency game this is huge! Seems that everyone is just losing hope as the European Central Bank and Germany can’t seem to come together on anything.

 

Ultimately the only weapon that they have is the printing press…buying more bonds with newly printed money to keep rates down in the ‘troubled’ nations. This in turn will eventually lead to inflation. Too much money chasing limited goods and services leads to higher prices for those same goods and services…at least that is the traditional thinking.

 

In my opinion we have not seen a ton of inflation in typical safe haven assets such as real estate due to the tremendous amount of price inflation that was artificially injected into the system via virtually unlimited cheap credit. Now we are seeing that ‘fluff’ taken out of the market entirely.

 

Given this logic then we might see a ‘bottom’ in that market and then a huge bounce. Rates will begin to rise and so will prices. We are already seeing food costs soar due to the drought and the drop in worldwide food supplies.

 

We will see if the making of the perfect storm are here and develop. The system is, in my opinion, severely stretched and it won’t take a lot to just see it disassemble. The rate and timing of this event is a moving target and when it becomes evident it may be too late for those that are not prepared!

Solar Storms, we are due

According to a recent article in Mainstream news, we are due for a major solar event that could potentially knock out our power grid or at least do some damage.

 

It has been about 150 years since we had a major storm and of course didn’t have anywhere near the level of technology that exists today and virtually all of it at risk to a major solar event. The scientist say that on average one of these major events occur once every 100 hundred years and thus we can expect such an event to occur anytime.

 

Of course it doesn’t really work like that. We could have 3 back to back in a period of 2 or 3 years. Mother nature really doesn’t pay attention to our math. Having said that we need to think about the consequences that we could have, considering we are at the peak in solar activity right now and will be for the next year or so, just in case something does occur and catch us totally unprepared. It certainly couldn’t hurt now could it? Well except for a little bit of money, that if spent wisely could help you weather that storm!

 

 

Moodys set to downgrade Spain to JUNK!

As if the European issues weren’t bad enough…Moodys is set to downgrade the Spanish bonds to junk status. This after downgrading all the Spanish banks by several notches. I suspect that this will not end well as Germany, the ‘giver’ of cash becomes more and more reluctant to dish it out to everyone that comes begging.

 

We still wait to see how all this will affect Italy and France while poor Portugal remains in the dumpster. All the ‘southern’ european countries are in big trouble, led of course by Greece!

 

Just wait there will be more news coming. Consider what might happen if there is some major catastrophe to add to the woes!

 

 

Spain is poised for a downgrade to junk by Moody’s Investors Service, according to investors who sent the cost of default insurance for the nation’s biggest banks and companies close to record highs.

Enlarge image Spain Poised for a Cut to Junk as Default Swaps Near Records (

 

 

 

 

Credit-default swaps on Banco Santander SA (SAN), the country’s biggest bank, jumped 23 percent this quarter to 454 basis points, compared with an all-time high of 474 in November. Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA) rose 26 percent to 477, approaching May’s record 516, while phone company Telefonica SA (TEF) surged 70 percent to a record 540 basis points.

 

Moody’s downgraded 28 Spanish banks yesterday including a two-step cut for Banco Santander and a three-level reduction for BBVA, a week after it lowered Spain’s rating to Baa3, on the cusp of junk. The country remains on review for another cut by New York-based Moody’s after it sought a 100 billion-euro ($125 billion) international bailout for its banks and on speculation losses from its real estate industry will worsen.

 

“There’s more to come if Moody’s downgrades the sovereign as we expect in the next few weeks,” said Suki Mann, a credit analyst at Societe Generale SA in London. “A one-notch move to Ba1 will likely see all the country’s banking system in junk territory, with the possible exception of Santander.”

Worst Performing

 

Spanish bank bonds are the worst performing among European financial companies this month, losing 0.75 percent on average, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Euro Corporates Banking index of 742 securities. Debt tracked by the gauge returned 0.53 percent overall, with Italian bank bonds earning 0.27 percent and German securities making 0.19 percent.

 

Santander’s credit-default swaps declined two basis points to 451 basis points today, and BBVA’s fell three basis points to 478 basis points.

 

Bond spreads are widening, signaling potentially higher borrowing cost for the country’s largest lenders. Santander’s 1 billion euros of 4 percent notes due 2017 are quoted at 559 basis points above the safest government bonds compared with a 553 basis-point spread yesterday, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader bid prices. BBVA’s 500 million euros of 4.875 percent bonds due 2016 are quoted at 578 basis points from 567 basis points yesterday.

Spreads Widen

 

The yield premium on Spanish bank bonds jumped to 648 basis points, or 6.48 percentage points, relative to German government debt, from 433 basis points at the end of the March, the Bank of America Merrill Lynch data show. That compares with 291 basis points on average for debt tracked by the bank bond index.

 

Moody’s cut at least a dozen Spanish lenders to junk status, and in all cases the ratings remained under review for further downgrades, the ratings company said yesterday in a statement. Junk debt is graded below Baa3 by Moody’s and BBB- by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings.

 

The latest downgrades reflect the government’s reduced creditworthiness, which lessens its ability to support the lenders, as well as Moody’s expectation that losses linked to commercial property will keep rising, according to yesterday’s statement.

 

“We suspect that the sovereign will itself require a bailout, not just the Spanish banks,” said Olly Burrows, a London-based credit analyst at Rabobank International.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Esteban Duarte in Madrid at eduarterubia@bloomberg.net

 

Now we have the beginnings of the ‘Perfect Storm’ economically speaking if you ask me. What can you do to Prepare for the ‘new’ economy that might unfold?

Oklahoma earthquake, getting like CA

Wow, yet another pair of earthquakes in Oklahoma. Seems like there is beginning to be as much activity there as in California.

 

Two earthquakes strike central Oklahoma

 

 

Two earthquakes struck central Oklahoma this morning. The first occurred about 1:21 a.m. two miles southeast of Jones. The second struck about 10 minutes later near Paden. Paden is about 60 miles east of the Greater Oklahoma City Metro area.

 

KWTV Channel 9 News in Oklahoma City is also currently reporting on July 13th the first earthquake in Jones registered at a 3.3 magnitude on the Richter scale. The second earthquake was smaller. It only registered at a 2.8 magnitude on the Richter scale.

 

“Oklahoma is getting as bad as California,” Heidi Dennis, a life-long resident of Oklahoma City, said. “I was born here and lived her all my life; I’ve heard of so many earthquakes in Oklahoma.”

 

“I know Oklahoma is on a fault, but we’ve had a lot of earthquakes lately,” Dennis continued. “I’m just glad no one has been hurt and the damage hasn’t been too bad.”

 

Getting a bit better prepared might not be a good idea for everyone. Looks like we will see more on the horizon!

New Madrid Fault set to go off??? Probably not…Maybe?

In all the frightening disaster scenarios out there an earthquake, a large one, along the New Madrid fault is perhaps one of the most serious. The last time there were major earthquakes along the fault, entire cities disappeared and rivers changed their course. There is no way to know exactly how many casualties there were as this was well over 120 years ago and longer.

 

If this blog has any truth in it the government might be expecting something. Then again it is the government and how reliable are they?

 

Read with discretion and make your own decisions by clicking here.

 

Personally, irregardless of this I have been preparing for any type event where I will need water, food and fuel for an extended period of time. It just costs so little in the whole scheme of things that it just makes sense, at least to me!

2011 Tornadoes Worst in almost a century

Interesting thing in this article is the attitudes of the people that were affected…too much trouble to move, too many warnings etc. Lack of personal responsibility is the key here, at least in my opinion.

 

A little bit of caution can go a long way towards keeping you alive and thriving!

 

 

2011…A Deadly Year for Tornadoes.

2011 has been a very deadly year for tornadoes, but in this day and age with advanced technology, how did so many people lose their lives?

Reporter: Cindi Clawson

Email Address: cindi.clawson@wndu.com

 

 

2011 has been a very deadly year for tornadoes, but in this day and age with advanced technology, how did so many people lose their lives?

 

552 people lost their lives, making 2011 the second deadliest year on record for killer tornadoes, tied with 1936.

 

The majority of the deaths this year happened on two days: April 27, when a severe outbreak of tornadoes occurred in the southeast, and May 22 when a single tornado killed 158 people in Joplin, Missouri.

 

In some cases, the tornadoes may have been so strong that they were just not survivable. But there are some behavior patterns that may have come into play. According to the National Weather Service, many people interviewed did not immediately react to the sirens and the tornado warning.

 

Last month at a town hall meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, some tornado survivors told first-hand about their attitudes and reactions to sirens and warnings.

 

“We live on the edge of the county, and most of the time when it goes off it’s for the other side of the county and it’s a big fuss for nothing.”

 

That’s number one: Many indicated that the sirens go off too much and they have become complacent.

 

Mike Sabones, National Weather Service, describes the differences between the types of warning systems, “There are different schools of thought on who should control when sirens go off. Should it be solely based on a National Weather Service product? Or should it continue to be done as it is done now where the decisions to sound the sirens is a local government decision?”

 

Second: Many people felt that there are too many tornado warnings.

 

Sabones describes the differences between the types of tornados, “We have a tricky problem with tornadoes. There’s a wide range of tornadoes. There’s very weak tornadoes that touch down, do a little bit of damage, aren’t very deadly, and there are very big, very deadly tornadoes. Clearly we want to warn people about those very big, very deadly tornadoes, the ones that kill people.”

 

And third: There are many who think that a tornado will never happen in their area.

 

Sabones explains why people should not think that it can not happen to them, “If you’re 25 years old and you say, ‘gee, I can’t remember the last time we had a huge tornado outbreak here.’ Well, if you go back to 1974 and 1965 there were huge outbreaks in these areas, and if they happened before, they certainly can happen again.”

 

So, how do we overcome these issues so we can reduce the number of fatalities?

 

Sabones explains how people are thinking maybe there should be different warnings, “So, people are kicking around things like, gee, should we issue one type of warning for what we think are more significant tornadoes, the EF2 and higher end tornadoes, and some type of a lower-end warning for the EF0, EF1 tornadoes, the ones that are short-lived, weaker, don’t tend to kill people.”

 

Another important change would be to upgrade sirens to be able to sound for just the parts of the county under a warning. However, the cost of doing so may not make it possible.

 

One positive thing that we are seeing is the role of social media in getting the warnings and information out. Not only are people getting more and more information online, but when the power goes out, people are turning to their smart phones to get their weather updates. There are more and more options for getting those warnings.

 

Sabones explains that the National Weather Service can not be fully responsible, “There is some responsibility that has to be borne by the individual. To insure that he’s given himself a lot of options. A lot of different ways to make sure that he can get that critical weather information that just might save his life.”

 

As we look to the future, the National Weather Service is upgrading their Doppler Radars to Dual-Polarization Technology which will help us see more clearly into storms.

 

We also expect to see GPS technology in weather radios in the next few years. Both of those should bring very positive improvements to the warning process.

 

Are you willing to take responsibility for your actions, or lack thereof?

Solar Flares…What do you know?

Solar flares could really disrupt life as we know it…how much do you know?

 

 

Solar storms increasing through 2013

 

 

For thousands of years people have been watching the sun. With the invention of the telescope, scientists have been recording the number of spots they see forming on the sun’s surface. Sunspots are believed to be the source of solar storms.

 

According to Matt Penn, an associate astronomer at the National Solar Observatory located here in Tucson, “On the Sun we have sunspots with huge magnetic fields and they’re the source of two things that effect us on Earth…Solar flares and also Coronal Mass Ejections. So a Solar flare happens when the magnetic field within these sunspots changes and erupts with light and particles, a CME, a coronal mass ejection happens when an enormous amount of mass is thrown off from again a change in a magnetic field of a sunspot.”

 

Not all solar storms effect the Earth. Many times this matter is hurled into space and never encounters the Earth. The Earth is exposed to solar flares and CMEs from time to time, causing some dramatic effects.

 

Penn says, “The effects on Earth are really dramatic, and in particular, the more we depend on space assets, satellites for communication or navigation or even high altitude flights, the more of an impact it will have on us on the Earth. For instance, the particles from a solar flare can disrupt the electronics in a satellite and cause dropouts in communication so if you are using your GPS device and the GPS satellite goes out, than you’re lost and stuck without navigation.”

 

Even without telescopes, people have known about these storms for some time. The interaction of these storms on the Earth’s Atmosphere causes the Aurora that is usually visible near the Poles (between 90-60 degrees).

 

“We’ve known about solar storms for a long time by watching the aurora, and what happens when a magnetic gas clouds comes from the sun and interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field is it accelerates particles here in the Earth’s environment and those can impact our atmosphere causing aurora from glowing molecules in our atmosphere, so we’ve known about solar interactions for a long time, and those are some of the most beautiful interactions that we can see.”

 

It is not just satellites and the atmosphere affected by these solar storms.

 

According to Penn, “As long as you have a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field you can induce currents, in particular if you have a long conductor like a long transmission line along the ground, you can get an overload of current through that line. And this happened way back in the 1800s, where we had telegraph lines across the country which weren’t protected properly, at the end of the telegraph line you would have a sparking device to send your message and because the current was too big in this line, the sparks were out of control and they actually burned down telegraph offices back in the 18-hundreds, but also now, even though we have protection in our long lines which are now power transmission lines, we can still overload circuits because the currents that are caused by the magnetic field changes are so large, So in 1989 in Quebec, Canada, Millions of people were without power in the winter because within 30 seconds the currents overloaded some of the circuitry and caused a massive power outage. During a sunspot cycle maximum those events are more likely to occur and so we may be facing more of those in the future.”

 

We study sunspots because we believe them to be the source of solar storms. Sunspots reach a maximum on the surface of the sun every 11 years or so. This cycle is called the “sunspot cycle”. The sunspot cycle is actually part of a larger 22 year cycle called “the solar cycle”.

 

“So right now we are going into solar cycle number 24 and we’re predicting that around 2012 or at the beginning of 2013 we’ll reach the maximum, during a sunspot cycle, we see very few sunspots at first, than they increase to a maximum and then they decrease over an 11 year cycle, so right now we are in the rising phase, so the number of spots that we see is increasing from month to month as we observe the sun.”

 

At this point there is no way to predict when a sunspot will erupt, but the theory is that it has to do with the magnetic fields.

 

“So in a sunspot when the magnetic field changes it releases energy in the form of a flare or a coronal mass ejection, we think that the magnetic field becomes more complicated as a sunspot may twist or certain other dynamic events occur at a sunspot, so what we look for at our telescopes out at Kitt Peak is the complexity of the magnetic field. Spots with a very complicated magnetic field structure have more energy and are more likely to erupt, spots that are simple and are maybe round and have a simple magnetic field configuration are less likely to erupt.”

 

Once a solar storm erupts, what can we expect on Earth?

 

“With a solar storm there are really two waves that can really impact the Earth, The first wave is the light and the high energy particles that travel at nearly the speed of light and so we can’t really get any warning about that, by the time we see it, the effect is occurring and they’re changing our satellites or they are disrupting our electronics. The second wave of a solar storm though can be a magnetized plasma cloud, a river of magnetic gas that takes between, sometimes one or sometimes up to four days to travel from the Sun to the Earth, and so by observing a flare we can predict when this magnetic cloud would impact the Earth, if it will impact the Earth and then make changes to our systems here on Earth to react to that.”

 

These plasma clouds can move at speeds up to a million miles per minute, but that still gives the groups that own and operate satellites two to three days notice before the cloud arrives. This might give them time to react.

 

“Well if you know a CME is going to impact your satellite, what you can do is shutdown critical circuits. Circuits that have to do with the stabilization of a satellite for instance or circuits that have to do with pointing of communications antenna on the satellites because you certainly don’t want your satellite firing jets in orbit or repointing the antenna that talks to the Earth during an event like that. In terms of longer term protection, companies that launch satellites have shielding on them which is basically just mass, lead to protect them from the particles and so you could send up more and more shielding, in particular if you expect solar storms to happen more and more.”

 

Even though companies know about solar storms, sometimes damage still occurs.

 

“Oh yes many satellites have been lost, many companies may not want to admit that a solar storm was involved in the loss but the coincidences have been pretty clear, as a matter of fact, in 1997, When I was driving to Kitt Peak one morning a communication satellite was knocked out and as I was in Three Points trying to buy gas at the pay-at-the-pump service station, I couldn’t because the link between the pay-at-the-pump and my bank was broken because the satellite was off-line from the solar storm. More and more of these things could happen including disruption of the GPS satellite system, in that case, a lot of people depend on that and it could have a lot of impact on people’s lives.”

 

Shielding can be added to satellites to protect them, so why is this not done more?

 

“Whether or not a company protects its satellites enough is really a money issue, the shielding that is necessary to protect your circuits is extra weight and that’s the whole cost of launching a satellite is the weight, so in particular in hard economic times, companies are trying to do things on a narrow profit margin and so they may skimp on some of the shielding in that case we maybe more vulnerable to solar disruption.”

 

Some say the sunspot cycle is constant, but the research being done right here at Kitt Peak might change that line of thinking.

 

Penn says, “My colleague Bill Livingstone and I have been looking at magnetic field strengths and sunspots and we have now a 13 year data set that covers the last solar cycle completely and now the introduction to this cycle into the rise phase, during that time we’ve seen something that people haven’t seen in any other data set, and that is the average magnetic field strength of sunspots has been decreasing, as a matter of fact it has been decreasing in a very linear, very straight line form…the second thing that no one else has seen is there is a threshold, a minimum value of magnetic field strength that’s required to form a dark sunspot…so if you take a decreasing magnetic field and a threshold to that eventually, we think, that the magnetic field and sunspots will be too weak to form dark areas on the sun, and we may go into the next cycle, cycle 25 without seeing any sunspots. This has happened once in the history of the sun that we know about, we’ve observed in the 1600s, it was called the Maunder Minimum period, but it is a unique chance for us now to look at how the sun might go into a minimum period like that and what the physics involved are.”

 

Could this “sunspot minimum” period have an effect on the Earth and in particular the weather?

 

“There is some controversy as to what would happen during a sunspot minimum, during a grand minimum as we call it. Where many cycles are reduced in amplitude, there is some evidence that there might be some climatic influence, but science is very tough, you can imagine the climate records from the 1600s are pretty sparse, but there also is no real physical connection people are no able to draw the physics out about why that would occur so its pretty much on the speculative side about whether that would have a climatological effect. We think that it may decrease the overall intensity of solar storms that would impact the Earth, but we can’t really be sure, we know that the sun erupts and emits magnetized gas plasma even without sunspots and some of those events also impact the Earth, and so even if we don’t have sunspots, we’ll still have solar storms and they may still be damaging.”

 

These storms often have effects on electronics, but it turns out they can also effect some sports!

 

“One of the fun things that a solar storm can do in terms of your recreation is that apparently a lot of people race pigeons, homing pigeon races are popular in some parts of the world and there’s apparently some betting that goes on with these races, it turns out that homing pigeons use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate, during a solar storm, the Earth’s magnetic field has changed and some of these pigeons become lost and people loss a lot of money because of this, so solar storms really do have an impact in some recreational sense with us here on the Earth.”

 

We use Satellites for nearly everything we do these days, from making cell phone calls to using your bank card. Nearly everything we do uses communication satellites. These satellites are vulnerable to strong solar storms.

 

“In terms of day-to-day life, if communication satellites become disrupted then you can imagine that you may not have as easy access to banking or charging your credit card, so things like that become more important, especially as we become more dependent on satellite communication in our daily lives.”

 

“The companies that provide us with communications and navigations really consider this in their overall picture in how they are going to provide the service, but as a solar storm happens that service becomes more and more stressed. So you may go a few days without having navigation if a big solar storm impacts the Earth.”

 

Historically, have there been any storms that, if they were to happen today, would have been a major problem?

 

“Going back to the 1700s, when Carrington saw this huge flare on the sun, if an eruption like that had an impact on the Earth now, people estimate that there would be trillions of dollars-worth of damage to the power grids, navigation systems and to communication systems. So its kind of a gamble that we’re taking, if we’re on the hairy edge of protecting our systems and we get a big solar storm, it could cause a lot of damage, so maybe its better to be safe.”

 

So have there been any regulations for people launch satellites to protect them from solar storms?

 

“I don’t think there are any hardware constraints on satellites to protect them from radiation, something that people may not know is if you are flying on a high altitude flight, particularly if you go over the pole, you can get a large dose of X-Rays, basically equivalent to a chest X-Ray if there’s a solar storm that’s going on and this is something that flight crews, that manage those flights or working on those flights have to deal with. Some of them could be exposed if they were allowed to fly as much to more radiation than nuclear workers, I never really realized this but that’s the kind of level that even flying in a high altitude airplane, as your job, you can be exposed to.”

 

Here in Southern Arizona, scientists have great weather, and a great resource at Kitt Peak to observe the Sun.

 

“So one of the good things about observing the sun from Kitt Peak at the McMath-Peace Telescope is that the telescope is sensitive to inferred light, and that has allowed us to make really sensitive measurements inside the sunspots, so we can measure the complexity and the twist of these magnetic fields and hopefully be able to predict flares and eruptions better.”

 

Sunspots might look small even through a telescope, but these fast moving spots are much larger than they appear.

 

“Sunspots, the ones that we are looking at now are about two or three times the size of the earth, so these are huge things. The Sun is a hundred earths across, so any dot that you would see is about the size of the earth.”

 

For more on Sunspots and on the work of NSO here in Tucson please visit: http://nsokp.nso.edu/

 

Are you as prepared for this type of event as you could be?

Icelandic Volcano…set to go off….

Once again another huge volcano in Iceland is set to go off and could disrupt air travel again…

 

Icelandic Volcano Threatens Mass Disruption

 

A huge Icelandic volcano long overdue an eruption is showing signs of activity – threatening disruption to air traffic, experts have said.

 

There have been more than 500 tremors at Katla in the south of the country in just the last month.

An increase in activity at the site since July has also been causing volcanologists concern, when increasing temperatures and seismic activity caused a flood, washing away a road bridge.

The last major eruption at the volcano was in 1918, and caused such a large glacier meltdown that icebergs were swept by the resulting floods into the ocean.

Significant activity at Katla – which has a huge 6.2 mile (10km) crater – usually occurs every 40 to 80 years.

It is feared when it does eventually erupt, it could be the most powerful activity the country has seen in almost a century.

Catastrophic flooding could result as the frozen surface of the volcano melts, sending vast amounts of water into the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Volcano expert Andy Hooper, from Delft University, said although there had been increased activity at the site, it was difficult to predict if and when Katla would erupt.

However, he told Sky News Online that the implications for Iceland if an eruption did occur would be “major”.

“Because of the glacier on top, massive amounts of ice would melt, washing away the roads.

“There could also be a big ash fallout on people living in the area and that will affect the farms.

“There could be big implications for people there.

“In terms of the rest of the world, it really depends on the weather at the time of the eruption.

“If Katla erupts, it will erupt higher (than recent volcanoes) and that means the ash will stay around longer – that could impact on air traffic.”

A statement on Iceland’s Met Office website warned there was no imminent threat but that “given the heightened levels of seismic activity, the situation might change abruptly”.

“Monitoring teams at the Icelandic Met Office are following the ongoing activity closely, and sensor-based networks around the volcano ensure that all seismological, geodetic, and hydrological changes are detected.”

 

You can bet that the Icelandic people are prepared for this event!

 

2 more Earthquakes in Oklahoma

Things just keep getting stranger…

 

Two small earthquakes recorded east of Oklahoma City

The U.S. Geological Survey reports that two earthquakes struck near Meeker shortly after 3:30 a.m. Sunday.

 

Two earthquakes struck Sunday morning about 40 miles east of Oklahoma City.

 

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the 3.2 and 2.2 magnitude quakes hit near Meeker shortly after 3:30 a.m. Sunday. The quakes were about 4 miles from Johnson and 9 miles from Shawnee.

No damage was reported in Lincoln County, a sheriff’s dispatcher said.

Oklahoma was rattled by a 5.6 earthquake on Nov. 5, the largest ever recorded in the state since 1952. It caused damage to several homes and buildings in Shawnee, Prague and Sparks.

The two quakes Sunday were aftershocks.

While it’s difficult to determine a precise length of time that aftershocks will occur, it’s typical for them to occur for at least a week or two after a major seismological event, U.S. National Earthquake Information Center geophysicist Rafael Abreu said.

“As time goes by, they do keep tapering off,” he said.

If another earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater hits, it will be considered a separate main event and another series of diminishing temblors will be expected to occur, Abreu said.

 

Read more: http://newsok.com/two-small-earthquakes-recorded-east-of-oklahoma-city/article/3623022#ixzz1ddi3yuTy

 

The question is are you prepared for something like this?

Another Texas Earthquake

Talk about odd, 2 earthquakes in one month is South Texas! I am from that part of the world and have never heard of, or can remember such a thing as an earthquake in that area!

 

One never knows when they might need provisions…Are you prepared?

 

Magnitude 3.3 earthquake shakes South Texas

Express-News

Updated 09:50 p.m., Saturday, November 12, 2011

 

A magnitude 3.3 earthquake shook a rural area south of San Antonio early Saturday morning.

 

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake, whose epicenter was about 44 miles southeast of the city, struck at about 4:35 a.m. No damage was reported.

 

A 4.8 magnitude quake struck the area last month, the largest recorded in South Texas since USGS began keeping track.

 

Experts say small earthquakes are not uncommon in the area. Alan Dutton, chairman of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Texas at San Antonio, has said the region gets a tremor about every two to four years.

 

The state’s largest recorded quake happened Aug. 16, 1931 — a 5.8 magnitude temblor near Valentine in far West Texas’ Jeff Davis County.

No matter where I might be I would make sure to have some Water and Storable food just for starters!