The Awakening

Have you noticed that suddenly there are earthquakes going on everywhere? Within the past few weeks, there has been a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Japan, a mysterious 2-month long series of earthquakes in Reno, NV, and even an earthquake in Illinois. And just today, a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake in China.

It's not just earthquakes: think of all the volcanos that have suddenly been in the news recently. There is the Chaiten volcano in Chile that suddenly started erupting for the first time in thousands of years. Kilauea volcano in Hawai'i National Park has suddenly become much more active, resulting in some areas of the park to be evacuated.

All of this within the past few weeks - since mid-April or so. Everything is just getting all shook up. It makes sense, but it's still a little worrisome. Is all this just a precursor to even more eruptions and earthquakes? Or was today's massive Chinese earthquake the culmination?

We are very rapidly becoming immune to large death tolls in the headlines. The UN death toll estimate for the Myanmar cyclone last week is around 100,000 people. The death toll for today's earthquake in China is in the thousands. (Update: the death toll for the China earthquake is now close to 12,000 people as of the morning of May 13).


In the U.S., we aren't having the same kind of death tolls, luckily, but we do seem to be having more severe weather than usual this year. There was the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak that killed 57 people. Then there was the tornado that struck downtown Atlanta. Over the weekend, there were tornadoes in Oklahoma & Kansas that killed an additional 22 people.

So far this year, we've had 910 tornadoes in the U.S., and it's still only the beginning of May. In general, the U.S. averages about 1200 tornadoes a year. By the end of May in 2007, there had been 799 tornadoes reported, with a total of 1305 for the whole year. We still have to get through May, but the remainder of the year should have about 30% of our yearly tornado totals... which would indicate that we are on track to get about 570 additional tornadoes this year.



Spring this year is bringing with it a whole slew of depressing geologic & climatic events. They are unlikely linked - unless you consider the ash plumes from the volcanoes entering the atmosphere and influencing weather patterns (which does happen). As the earth awakens this spring, it appears she is angry and is on a murderous rampage.