Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Earthquakes and Tsunamis: Quake hits Los Angeles 3/17/14

On Monday, March 17, 2014 - St. Patrick's Day -- there was an earthquake in Los Angeles.  Although the quake was measured at a 4.4-magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale, you can clearly see the impact on people during an earthquake.

There were at least six aftershocks, with the strongest being measured at a 2.7-magnitude temblor. Some fear that this quake could mark the end of the several year "earthquake drought" that the area has experienced.  Below is a video of newscasters live when the earthquake hit.




The earthquake also made us recall the 2011 Japanese earthquake and Tsunami. All of Japan moved about 10 feet!


Sunday, March 9, 2014

Large Asteroid Passes near Earth

An asteroid as wide as two football fields passed relatively close to Earth.  The nearest it came to our planet was roughly eight times the distance from the earth to the moon (the Earth-moon distance averages 239,000 miles) -- so the asteroid passed about 2 million miles from the Earth!



Read more about other asteroids and this event here:
http://www.weather.com/news/science/space/large-asteroid-2014-cu13-pass-earth-20140309