by Michael
Trillions of gallons of rain have already fallen on the state of California, and more rain continues to fall as I write this article. Billions of dollars in damage has already been done, but of even greater concern is what all of this water could mean for southern California’s fault lines. As you will see below, geophysicists have discovered that the additional weight that flooding puts on fault lines can help trigger earthquakes. Of course we have been warned for many years that “the Big One” is way overdue in southern California, and when it finally happens it will be a disaster unlike anything we have ever seen before.
Water is very heavy. If you doubt this, just try lugging a couple of gallons of water around with you for a while.
Now trillions of gallons of rain have poured down on California, and all of that added weight is going to put additional stress on the fault lines in the southern portion of the state.
A number of years ago, a team of geophysicists determined that flooding helped trigger major earthquakes in southern California “at least three times in the past 2,000 years”…
Geophysicists have linked historical earthquakes on the southern section of California’s famed San Andreas fault to ancient floods from the nearby Colorado River.
The work has broad implications for understanding how floods or reservoirs relate to quakes — a topic that gained new relevance in 2008, after a massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed more than 80,000 people. Some geologists have proposed that impounding water behind a newly built dam there helped hasten the quake.
Now, new work in southern California suggests that at least three times in the past 2,000 years, the weight of river water spreading across floodplains seems to have helped trigger earthquakes in the region.
Geophysicist Daniel Brothers was one of the scientists that worked on this study, and he was very confident about what his team discovered…
“We found quakes happened about every 100 to 200 years and were correlated with floods,” says Brothers. “The Colorado River spills, loads the crust and then there is a rupture.” He says the team is “very confident” in its evidence for the existence of three flood-derived quakes, of roughly magnitude 6, which happened about 600 years ago, 1,100 years ago and 1,200–1,900 years ago. “Sediments don’t lie,” he says.
With all of that in mind, let’s talk about what has just happened in southern California.
Some of the rainfall totals that we have seen so far are just staggering…
The highest total came at the Cogswell Dam above Pasadena. NWS monitors at that site recorded 13.15 inches of rain in the past 72 hours.
A little farther south, Beverly Hills has seen 8.61 inches of rainfall, Culver City 7.71 inches and Downtown L.A. to the east has endured 8.13 inches.
That means that in just three days, downtown Los Angeles has received more than half of its 30-year average seasonal rainfall, which is 14.25 inches.
And it is being reported that UCLA’s weather station experienced “a 1-in-1,000 year rainfall event”…
The 11.87 inches that fell in 24 hours at UCLA’s weather station was a 1-in-1,000 year rainfall event. Technically known as a “1,000-year recurrence interval event,” according to meteorologist Jacob Feuerstein, a 1-in-1,000-year rain event is a statistical way of expressing the probability of such a huge rainfall occurring in any given year in a given location, according to NOAA.
That is certainly a lot of rain!
Overall, it has been estimated that approximately 5.6 trillion gallons of rain fell on California in a 48 hour period…
A rough calculation estimates that 5.6 trillion gallons of water has fallen across California the past two days, according to FOX Weather meteorologist Greg Diamond.
Of course that is not a final number.
More rain continued to fall after that estimate was made, and it is still raining in California as I write this article.
What we are witnessing is truly unprecedented, and all of this water is going to put immense pressure on southern California’s fault lines.
We’ll get back to that in a minute.
But first, let me talk a bit about the damage that all of this water has already caused.
In an article that I posted a few days ago, I speculated that this disaster would cause billions of dollars of damage in the state, and it appears that is precisely what has happened…
AccuWeather estimates the preliminary total damage and economic loss from the intense storms and record rainfall in California this week will be between $9 billion and $11 billion.
Right now, there are apocalyptic scenes all over southern California.
Flash floods, mudslides and fallen trees have caused immense amounts of destruction.
These massive Eucalyptus trees were blown down by Sunday's wind gusts of 60+ MPH smashing cars on this hillside above the Pacific. Fortunately the power here is buried. But 11% of Santa Cruz County is in the dark this morning.
We're live on @weatherchannel pic.twitter.com/0IThCYEB9E— Mike Seidel (@mikeseidel) February 5, 2024
Even if nothing else happens, this is going to be one of the costliest natural disasters that we have seen in a long time.
But what if the weight of all this water triggers “the Big One” at some point?
It has been reported that when “the Big One” strikes it could literally “plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly”…
The Big One may be overdue to hit California, but scientists near LA have found a new risk for the area during a major earthquake.
They claim that if a major tremor hits the area, it could plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly.
The discovery was made after studying the Newport-Inglewood fault, which has long been believed to be one of Southern California’s danger zones.
A lot of people seem to think that a part of the state could break off like a cracker and fall into the Pacific Ocean.
But that is not how it would work.
According to Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, land on the western side of a major fault line would suddenly drop by up to three feet and that would allow the Pacific Ocean to come rushing in…
The study showed that land within major Californian seismic faults could sink by 1.5 and three feet instantly.
The last known major quake occurred on the San Andreas fault in 1857.
Seismologists estimate the 800 mile-long San Andreas, which runs most of the length of the state, should see a large quake roughly every 150 years.
‘It´s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,’ Kirby said.
‘Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.’
As I have discussed in multiple books, scientists have repeatedly warned us that this is going to happen someday.
It is just a matter of time.
Will a disaster of this magnitude happen in 2024?
Let’s hope not, but I will definitely be watching southern California very closely now that all of this rain has fallen.
When it finally arrives, “the Big One” could hit without warning, and those living right along the coast may only have moments before the Pacific Ocean starts rushing over them.