Modified from a post at Geotripper.blogspot.com
By golly, there is going to be an earthquake in California tomorrow! I'm going to go out on a limb and predict it. In fact, I will state unequivocally that there will be several earthquakes in California, some in the north state, and some in the south state. And I will be correct in my predictions. So, that should net me a few stories on the cable news networks, and a flood of tweets across the Internet by worried people who don't really believe it, but it could be true, you know....
What's my secret? There is no secret. California has earthquakes every day. We had 368 of them in the last week alone (368 quakes in a week is NOT unusual...sometimes there are more, sometimes there are less, but always there are hundreds). Check out the map below the fold (from the USGS):
This blog was prompted by another flurry of requests from students and readers about someone somewhere predicting that we would have a big quake in California tomorrow; I won't provide links. They scare people needlessly, and it is irresponsible.
Anyone can predict quakes. But no one can predict large quakes with any kind of accuracy that will save lives. We can make long-term evaluations about the chances that a particular fault will rupture within a period of decades. But we can't predict big quakes a few days in advance. Anyone who says so is plain flat-out wrong. They will keep predicting quakes one after another, and one of these days, one of their hundreds of predictions will come true, and they will cash in.
We cannot predict earthquakes in such a way as to know the day, the week, or the month. We can use the history and prehistoric behaviour of fault zones to determine the possibility of a large quake within a time frame of decades. If you want a scientifically grounded prediction about earthquakes in California, check out the diagram below, from the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF). The message to take away? Ignore the tweets and the cable new readers, and pay attention to your personal emergency preparations. Quakes will happen.