EDIT: just had another aftershock right after posting this. Felt the 2.0 a couple hours ago too
EDIT2: yup usgs finally added it https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000ma95...
EDIT: just had another aftershock right after posting this. Felt the 2.0 a couple hours ago too
EDIT2: yup usgs finally added it https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000ma95...
It's a bit complicated, because the increase in stress on the fault from the weight of the reservoir can actually be primarily an increase in normal stress, i.e. an increase in the clamping force preventing the fault from slipping (i.e. the crust on either side of the fault sliding, i.e. the earthquake), so the weight of the reservoir can actually impede, rather than promote, seismicity. However if the geometry of the system is just right such that the increase in shear stress from the weight of the reservoir can increase on the fault, then the reservoir could really trigger the earthquake. Typically, though, the increase in pore fluid pressure is the most likely trigger as it's not geometry dependent--pumping a fracture with fluids will always promote failure. This is what happens with the seismicity associated with natural gas fracking and subsequent wastewater fluid injection.
The thing that is hard to grapple with all of this is that changes in stress and fluid pressure on the fault are really, really small compared with the ambient stress and fluid pressure. These are tiny changes, but there is good reason to believe that many faults, especially those in seismically active areas, are very close to frictional failure (i.e., slipping and producing an earthquake) all the time. So therefore little things can perturb the system. However, it's worth keeping in mind that most of these small changes slightly increase or decrease the time to failure (as the primary loading that is causing the stress on the fault is probably continually happening at very low rates), rather than being the ultimate cause of the earthquake.
[1]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=dam...
[2]: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
So I thought, if the ground is moving the aquifer levels might change (no clue whether they would go up or down). I just pulled the ground water levels for Readington Township's well (in which whitehouse station is a place). Sure enough can clearly see when the earthquake hit: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/4035170744525...
So is this expected? Is this a thing that normally happens with earthquakes?
EDIT: Japan paper was cool https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... apparently they measure increased seismicity at times of high inflow. Also just had a big aftershock approx 22:00UTC. sounded like a bomb (I am in whitehouse station now)
OP is saying that much rain got into a reservoir that sits on top of an ancient volcanic caldera and has no rivers flowing into? Unexpectedly? and they didn’t think to stop pumping water in from the South Branch or release some water?
The math ain’t mathing.
Operations data for the reservoir updates every morning during workdays, so we'll know Monday if they paused pumping into it after the quakes, I don't have any better than daily numbers for it. Letting the water down isn't an option, most of the downstream gauges on the south branch were just at or near flood stage. River gauges available here: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=phi
https://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/kyoshin/
I felt a moderate earthquake here in Yokohama a few days ago. I had my phone with me, so I clicked my bookmark for that page and, before the shaking stopped, could see that it was a magnitude 6 with epicenter offshore from Fukushima--nothing to worry about. A minute or so later the permanent record of the quake was online:
https://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/2024040412...
Magnetic hard drives are sensitive to vibration. You can shout at hard drives and measure the effects (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4).
One of the worst-case scenarios is a head crash. A head crash will damage the media and may result in data loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash
My guess is that earthquakes powerful enough to cause a head crash are powerful enough for widespread destruction anyway, but I’m no expert. I did some quick searches for hard drives damaged by earthquake, and the only results I got were scenarios where the hard drives or the whole rack got knocked over by the earthquake and hit the floor.
- Personnel-level warning to immediately rerack servers, close racks, and get off ladders and away from fall hazards
- Proactively spin up generators to reduce failover in the more-likely event of a power disruption
- Potentially temporarily shut off very large circulation fans so that blades don't collide with the housings
- Potentially stop and carefully restart cooling water loops, in case there's a rupture in the system somewhere
Add to this: initiate failover or zone transfer of distributed servers / services to other DCs outside the likely impacted area.