Oklahoma has had some considerable seismic activity the last few years. It has led to the closing of fracking wastewater wells throughout the state. Last night, a 4.7-magnitude quake, followed seconds later by a 4.8-magnitude quake, woke a few people up.
The 4.8-magnitude quake was the strongest in the Sooner State since the November 2011 swarm that included the state's strongest on record, a 5.6-magnitude temblor in Prague on Nov. 6, 2011. It was the fourth strongest quake on record in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS).
This was one of 30 separate earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater reported in Oklahoma within a 19-hour span from Wednesday evening through early Thursday afternoon. Twenty-seven of those, including the two strongest quakes mentioned above, were clustered in southern Woods County. Two others were reported in the far northern Oklahoma City metropolitan area east-northeast of Edmond, and a third occurred around midday Thursday near Perry in north-central Oklahoma.
[my emphasis]
That’s a lot of activity. Can it all be fracking related? Who’s to say?
In 2015, 907 quakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater were reported in Oklahoma, up from 584 in 2014, according to KFOR-TV.
There were only 42 such earthquakes in the state in 2010 and 1 such tremor in 2005.
According to the USGS, there have been 30 such earthquakes already in 2016, the most recent being a preliminary magnitude-4.0 tremor near Fairview at 1:59 p.m. Thursday.
[emphasis mine]
These two things may both be true, but at least one of them is for sure.
1) Fracking and (more specifically) the waste water management connected to fracking is doing something to the earth in the Oklahoma area.
2) God is angry at Oklahoma.