What was I drinking last night?  Really!  It was just Diet Coke along with some microwave burritos.  Of course, if you don't know already, the San Francisco Bay Area had a 5.1 earthquake yesterday, and then they go on to say that according to experts, there is an eventual 7.5 quake on the way.  O.K.., they just won't tell us when.  Awwww.  Come on!  Can't they do better than give us a between two and twenty-second warning?

In an earlier project, entitled Stalking the Big One, from 2019, I discussed a possible method for detecting what might be premonitory p-waves associated with a major seismic event, several hours or even days before that event, that is by attempting to analyze the effects of induced sympathetic vibrations on the aquifer associated with a Geyser field hundreds of miles away.

Of course, just a few days after I posted that article, the public feed for that particular seismograph was mysteriously cut by who knows whom?  Then, shortly thereafter, I read somewhere that either a Russian trawler or perhaps an Iranian boat operating in international waters allegedly cut through a transatlantic cable, and not only that - they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of seismographic equipment which was being used to monitor for activity associated with undersea volcanoes.  Hmmm.  Kind of reminds me of a certain movie, maybe?

In the meantime, Trump doesn't believe in climate change, and Biden thinks that seismographs are a hoax.  So let's take a look at the public feed for the seismograph at Big Mountain, and ask ourselves, IF yesterday's earthquake could have been predicted, forecasted, or anticipated, or whatever - based on the theory that I described in Stalking the Big One.  First, take a look that the public feed for the last 15 days:

Now, let's take a closer look at the feed from the days leading up to the quake.  For example here is October 17th, 2022.

Not much to see here, although it might useful to go back and look at the data for the last few years and see how much overall noise is typically present with this particular seismograph.  Some of the other seismographs are rather pathetic in terms of the amount of anthropogenic noise that is picked up, i.e, traffic, and industrial noise, as well as natural sources of non-seismic information, like wind and rain that can really mess things up below two Hertz.  Yet, IIRC, Big Mountain is usually pretty quiet in this respect and is a much better listening point than let's say Parkfield, or Mammoth, for example.  Bollinger Canyon, I think is pretty much a mess, but someone had to build it anyway because sometimes you never know unless you try.

Now let's look at some later images from Big Mountain.  This one is from October 20th, 2022.

Now the appearance of the beginnings of some kind of wow-signal at around 13:00 PDT.  Here, we can see a strong signal at around 7.5Hz, and a medium signal at just barely above 9.0 Hz.

Now let's take a look at October 22, 2022 - skipping over October 21, because the feed is mostly inoperative on the 21st.

Here we see that the 7.5Hz component has gone from strong to intense, subjectively speaking and that the 9Hz component appears to be shifting upward, with some additional activity breaking through towards almost 10Hz!  Furthermore, the intensity of that component has also increased substantially.

Now by way of analogy, even if the analogy is not strictly accurate, this is exactly what we would want to see, were we for example trying to study a simulation of some kind of fracture dynamics by intentionally over-tightening let's say: a guitar string or a piano string,  Which we might tighten, and then pluck - over and over again as we watch the frequency increase, and increase, and increase, that is until the material begins to enter a kind of visco-elastic semi-plastic phase, like some kind of pizza string cheese effect, resulting in a rapid decrease in resonant frequency, and then sudden failure.

This is also just like what you might have noticed if you ever had the unpleasant experience of snapping off a bolt here or there while working on an expensive engine.  When you know THAT feeling, well YOU never forget it.

Now let's look at Sunday, October 23, 2022:

Here we go!  Are we entering visco-elastic failure mode or are we not?  The 9.5Hz component is starting to fade, but there is also this 6.8 Hz, or thereabouts component that seems to be getting stronger.  Now, what if we could plot df/dt and solve for t=0?  We need more data, and here it is from Monday, October 24th, 2022.

Look at in increase in intensity, even though the higher frequency components are starting to fade out, the lower frequency undertone is continuing to increase in intensity.  This is exactly what the visco-elastic failure model predicts, and then, the earth falls silent - just like it did right before Ridgecrest, even though we do continue to get a scattering of broadband streaks suggesting traditional foreshock or swarming activity, which is also a bit unusual for Big Mountain, but remember - according to the USGS, these seismographs are supposedly sensitive enough to detect anything bigger than a magnitude 5 as far away as Tokyo.  Triangulating sources by examining the time of arrival at multiple sites is not within the scope of this article.

Now let's look at the main event:  Tuesday, October 24th, 2022.

Now imagine that you are climbing a tree, and as if, isn't this all of a sudden, you find yourself way too far out on a limb, you hear a loud crack in a certain branch, you know, as in your branch.  This is not the time to call that insurance guy who comments as a meteor strikes someone's garage - but you know that "that can't be good".  with a little luck, you just might have a chance to sing a verse and a chorus of Rock-a-Bye Baby in the Tree-Top and then you know what happens next.  At 12:10 AM there was what looks like another foreshock, followed by yet another possible foreshock at around 2:20ish, followed by the main event at 11:46 AM.

I postulate, therefore, that earthquakes actually happen the day before you think that they happen.  We just need to figure out how to calculate the time between that "when the bough breaks" event and well, you know - SPLAT!

The role of Tachyonic-Quasii crystals will be discussed further in a later log entry.  Good luck Big-Bent Cereal Box-shaped State! (With all of the fruits, nuts, and flakes - crumbs tend to sink to the bottom, but that is another subject.)  Good Luck.  You will need it.

In any case - here is a link to the PUBLIC DOMAIN (for Copyright purposes) feed of the Big Mountain Seismograph:

Spectrograms | BBGB HHZ NC -- (Big Mountain) (usgs.gov)