January 13 - the 24th Day of Winter

"I feel the earth move/under my feet" 





Probably the most significant thing for today happened just after midnight: At 12:01:04 am there was a M6.4 earthquake 58 km (36 mi) NNE of Isabela (57 KM due north of Hatillo) where the North American plate slides under the Caribbean plate at the edge of the Puerto Rico Trench. Several reports say there were actually two quakes, one right after the other, an M5.5 followed immediately by the M6.4. 

It truly literally rocked our world.

Since then, according to the USGS, there have been at least eight additional quakes measuring between M3.1 and M3.7. One source says there have been 13 terremotos today, 34 in the last week and 153 in the past month. 

The edge of the Puerto Rican (or Caribbean) tectonic plate and the Puerto Rican Trench are just 75 miles north of us. That plate boundary is where the North American plate slides under the Puerto Rican plate. It's part of the reason Puerto Rico is here at all. It also means we have terremotos pretty much all the time. We like the little ones because they release pressure a little at time, poco a poco. Most of the time we don't even know they happen unless we look on sites like the USGS site. But every now and then we get a big enough one to feel. 

Two years ago there was an M5.7 in the middle of the night. Folks down here near the beach were so afraid of a tusnami, they got in their cars and started driving up the hill. At 2:30 in the morning there was a traffic jam on the hill and nothing could move. That terremoto was inland in Moca and posed no tsumani threat. 

 Fortunately, neither did the ones last night.