I was asleep in bed, trying to catch up to prevent myself from getting ill, when there was a large earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska (GA), offshore of Kodiak, Alaska. When I wakened, I noticed a fb message from my friend Scott Willits notifying me of an M 8.2 earthquake in Alaska, posted at 2:20 AM local time. I immediately got up to check on this and was surprised that there was not a tsunami evacuation going on. I live in the small town of Manila (population ~700), on the North Spit (a sand spit west of Arcata and Eureka, CA). I live above 10 m in elevation and do not consider myself exposed to tsunami risks, local or distant (especially given that (1) the CSZ locked zone is mostly under land here and (2) that the part of the locked zone that is not under land is in shallow water; so our local tsunami will probably be much smaller than further north, like Crescent City or Brookings). I have been involved in tsunami education and outreach for over 15 years and prepared the first tsunami hazard map for northern CA (working with Dr. Lori Dengler and the Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group). Needless to say, I am cogent and aware about the tsunami risk here in norcal.
SO. I soon discovered that the GA earthquake happened in the Pacific plate, far from the subduction zone and that the earthquake was a strike-slip earthquake. Both of these facts explained why the sheriff had not been at my door earlier this morning. In addition, the magnitude had been adjusted to M 7.9 (no longer a Great earthquake, just a Large earthquake;
earthquake classes are defined here). However, there were some small tsunami waves observed (see below) as reported by the National Tsunami Warning Center (see social media below).
This earthquake appears to be located along a reactivated fracture zone in the GA. There have only been a couple earthquakes in this region in the past century, one an M 6.0 to the east (though this M 6.0 was a thrust earthquake). The Gulf of Alaska shear zone is even further to the east and has a more active historic fault history (a pair of earthquakes in 1987-1988). The magnetic anomalies (formed when the Earth’s magnetic polarity flips) reflect a ~north-south oriented spreading ridge (the anomalies are oriented north-south in the region of today’s earthquake). There is a right-lateral offset of these magnetic anomalies located near the M 7.9 epicenter. Interesting that this right-lateral strike-slip fault (?) is also located at the intersection of the Gulf of Alaska shear zone and the 1988 M 7.8 earthquake (probably just a coincidence?). However, the 1988 M 7.8 earthquake fault plane solution can be interpreted for both fault planes (it is probably on the GA shear zone, but I don’t think that we can really tell).
This is strange because the USGS fault plane is oriented east-west, leading us to interpret the fault plane solution (moment tensor or focal mechanism) as a left-lateral strike-slip earthquake. So, maybe this earthquake is a little more complicated than first presumed. The USGS fault model is constrained by seismic waves, so this is probably the correct fault (east-west).
I prepared an
Earthquake Report for the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake here
