Boom Goes the Dynamite(?)

According to this piece in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has come up empty-handed in an attempt to explain the mysterious sonic boom that shook windows in Santa Cruz on Wednesday morning.

Fosco vaguely remembers hearing his windows rattling around 9:15 Wednesday morning, but he was in the middle of snoozebar episode at the time and didn't think much of it (except to wonder why his complex's trash dumpster was being emptied on a Wednesday).

Making the story stranger, however, is the fact that residents in Orange County, CA reported a similar sonic boom exactly twelve hours earlier.

As this article notes, most explanations won't hold water:

• Not an earthquake: "Seismic stations around the Monterey Bay recorded a compression wave at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday, but the wave lacked the up-and-down shear that usually characterizes an earthquake. And, Oppenheimer said, it was moving too slowly to be passing through rock."
  
• Not thunder: "Even if lightning had been present, thunder is only heard over a few miles, Blier said. Reports of the shaking came from cities ringing the Monterey Bay, and seismic monitors in Big Sur picked up the event."
  
• Not aliens: "The National UFO Reporting Center in Washington state received no calls from the Central Coast Wednesday morning."
  
• Not a meteor: "A falling meteor compresses the air below it and creates a vacuum above. That pressure difference could create a sonic boom, but it's more likely to tear the meteor apart in the upper atmosphere. For the sound wave to hit the ground, the meteor would have to be large - and low. 'To have enough energy to create a shock wave to rattle things on the ground, somebody would have had to have seen it,' Giorgini said. 'It probably was not a meteor.'"
  

Which means that it must have been a jet, right? Well, except that:

"We reviewed all the radar data for flights in the airspace in Northern California around the time that people reported this boom," said Ian Gregor, FAA spokesman for the Western-Pacific Region. "There were several military aircraft operating but they were slow. None of these aircraft were going supersonic."

Which seems to suggest that whatever was flying so fast was not a commercial airplane. Nor did it show up on radar, which seems to suggest that we're talking about something military and secret. Fosco can only imagine! But what kind of secret military aircraft would be flying along the California coast twice in twelve hours (near some of the most populated areas in the United States). And why couldn't this jet couldn't be tested farther from the coast (over the open ocean)? Intriguing, no?

All I can hope is that this is some part of protecting CA from North Korean missiles...

Shaken Like A Polaroid Picture

Fosco has lived in California almost three years and he finally felt his second earthquake tonight (you may remember his first). This one was tiny by comparison, an itty-bitty 3.8 on the Chareth Richter Scale.

In fact, the only reason Fosco felt it at all was that he was lying in bed trying to go to sleep early (at 10 pm!) so that he will be well-rested for all-day Inauguration history-in-the-making tomorrow (which inexplicably does not run on Pacific time...). As Fosco lay in the dark sleeplessly, he felt the bed give a tiny hop. Like a small bunny, really. A quick visit to the USGS site confirmed.

Fosco also did his geological duty, joining fifteen other Santa Cruz residents in reporting their impressions to create the "Shake Map":

You can see that, for Fosco and his cohort, the whole thing was basically a light blue kind of experience. Dare I even say "Carolina"?

And now Fosco returns to bed. Assuming Northern California remains intact seismically, he will see you all tomorrow morning for some Obama.

From the Annals of Future Disasters

They say that fire is one of the biggest causes of earthquake-related destruction. If so, then maybe the San Jose Mercury News has some good news today. A new study suggests that, in the event of a large earthquake along the Calaveras Fault, the Anderson Dam in Morgan Hill could fail. What would this mean?

In the worst case, a complete failure of Anderson Dam could send a wall of water 35 feet high into downtown Morgan Hill within 14 minutes, and eight feet deep into San Jose within three hours, under state emergency scenarios.

An eight foot wall of water in San Jose? Kowbunga (dude)! Unfortunately, the surfing won't be totally primo, as the water will presumably be choked with the corpses of Morgan Hillers. Of course, this occurrence isn't super likely:

How likely is a massive quake on that fault that could threaten the dam's integrity?

In recorded history, there have been no 6.6 or larger magnitude quakes on the Calaveras Fault. But one isn't impossible.

In 2003, the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that there is an 11 percent probability of a quake of 6.7 or larger on the Calaveras Fault in the next 30 years, and a 2 percent probability of a 7.0 or larger quake on the fault over the same time.

"If the Calaveras Fault ruptured across multiple segments, you could get an earthquake up to 7.2," said David Oppenheimer, a USGS seismologist in Menlo Park. "I don't think that's likely to occur, but you can't rule it out entirely."

For those of you who enjoy imagining the Bay Area Apocalypse, this should help you out a bit.

Little Earthquakes

It's the morning after Fosco's first earthquake and he still has plenty of ways to use rock music lyrics to refer to last night's quake. Here are some random quake-related notes:

• The surprisingly tabloid-y San Jose Mercury News exists exactly for this kind of thing. Here's the front page for today:
  
  Hmmm. That's subtle. Oh, by the way, did anyone hear how big the earthquake was? Anyone?
  
  
• Yes, we all felt it. But how long did it last? Fosco Lives! hosted a good-natured debate. Official estimates this morning placed the duration at 30 seconds. [N.B., that thread marks the inaugural comment from Fosco's boyfriend Oz.]
  
  
• As you may have gathered from the smaller headlines on the Mercury News front page above, this was the strongest quake in the Bay Area since the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta quake. As you can see from the map below, that quake was epicentered near Santa Cruz:
  
  The Loma Prieta brings back some bad, bad memories for folks around Santa Cruz, as that disaster leveled one out of every three buildings on Pacific Ave (the downtown shopping district).
  
  Even so, you have to love the attitude of the Santa Cruz Trader Joe's manager last night (as per the Santa Cruz Sentinel):
  

  At Trader Joe’s on Front Street, manager Steve Keenan hopped on the intercom to announce that “Santa Cruz rocks!”

  I love Trader Joe's.
  
  
• You have to love the personal interviews from the San Francisco Chronicle:
  

  Guitarist A.J. Flores was at his San Jose home playing with his band when the quake hit. A lamp and guitar fell over amid the shaking.
  
  "Yeah, man, we thought we were really rocking out," Flores said, adding that the musicians quickly realized it was an earthquake and not their Metallica cover song that caused the ruckus.

  Classic. Personally, I once mistook an F5 tornado for a particularly rousing cover of "Enter Sandman." Too bad it killed my grandma.
  
  Or is this one my favorite?
  

  A clerk at Kwik and Convenient in Milpitas, who said his name is Suki Suki, said not much was damaged - except his psyche.

  You have to feel for Suki Suki. I think we're all praying for the health of his delicate psyche.
  
  
• Fosco's sister, Maggie Tulliver, is still making fun of Fosco this morning for being both pedantic and patronizing. It all happened last night when Maggie was expressing her concern over how close a 5.6 quake is to a 6.9 Loma Prieta-grade quake. Fosco offered a brief lesson on earthquake magnitude beginning with the phrase: "Remember that the Richter scale is a logarithmic scale..." Maggie did not "remember" this fact and thought the statement was a bit condescending. Sorry, Maggie--sometimes Fosco just can't NOT be an academic.

Earthquake Brings All the Boys to the Yard

Fosco just felt his first earthquake! A 5.6 one centered to the NNE of San Jose. See?

It was short, but it was a bit upsetting. Don't believe me? Just ask this commenter...