SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

Did the earth move for you this morning (don't answer that )?

According to the UK earthquakes section of the British Geological Survey (BGS) there was a 1.9 magnitude earthquake at about 4:30 Universal Time (about 5:30 a.m. under the now British Summer Time) today (May 16 2017) occurring at a depth of 6km at Saxton, North Yorkshire. As that is very close to east Leeds I wonder if anyone felt the quake? Though a 1.9 magnitude event is not high in World events it is high for a local event.

At 6km it seems likely to be too deep to be a coal field related event (unless mines went much deeper than I would have thought) but oddly the live seismometer recorder chart at Haverah Park just north of Leeds does not show any signal of the event so it may still have been a very localised one so perhaps it was mine related.

For anyone interested in such things this is the link to a BGS website of real time seismographs of UK earthquakes http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/helicorder/heli.html

Thanks for the link. I am interested in such things. I looked at the traces for Haverah Park and Skipton and there were a few differences between the 2. Presumably the smaller perturbations are when the tea lady comes around with her trolley

blackprince wrote:Thanks for the link. I am interested in such things. I looked at the traces for Haverah Park and Skipton and there were a few differences between the 2. Presumably the smaller perturbations are when the tea lady comes around with her trolley

Hi blackprince .

Talking of real time seismic data for UK sites that for Market Rasen always seems to show that area appears to be constantly shaking! The Earth clearly moves a lot around there!

This is the link to the BGS recent UK earthquakes website http://www.quakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes ... vents.html. It is often not updated for some days so it was unusual to see the Saxton quake reported the day it reportedly happened.

Leodian wrote:

blackprince wrote:Thanks for the link. I am interested in such things. I looked at the traces for Haverah Park and Skipton and there were a few differences between the 2. Presumably the smaller perturbations are when the tea lady comes around with her trolley

Hi blackprince .

Talking of real time seismic data for UK sites that for Market Rasen always seems to show that area appears to be constantly shaking! The Earth clearly moves a lot around there!

This is the link to the BGS recent UK earthquakes website http://www.quakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes ... vents.html. It is often not updated for some days so it was unusual to see the Saxton quake reported the day it reportedly happened.

Hi Leo,
A snippet of useless information :- I knew Haverah Park , near Harrogate , as the site of Leeds University's long running cosmic ray detection experiment which ran from 1967 to 1987. I knew someone who worked on that experiment in the 60's. He had the use of a long wheelbase land rover to collect readings from the various measurement sites, which made some of us stuck in the labs quite envious. It was news to me that BGS monitor earthquakes there.
BP

Well the earth never moved for me !

Leodian wrote: At 6km it seems likely to be too deep to be a coal field related event (unless mines went much deeper than I would have thought) but oddly the live seismometer recorder chart at Haverah Park just north of Leeds does not show any signal of the event so it may still have been a very localised one so perhaps it was mine related.

Saxton is very near - possibly on top of - the Selby Coalfield, though none of the mining there went much below 1000m. Also very near Sherburn which had the large gypsum mines, but these were worked very close to the surface.

1.9 counts as a micro event, rarely felt by people. I wonder if it set any dogs barking?