I just read that West Texas experienced its third earthquake in less than a month. Intrigued, I grabbed USGS earthquake data for the continental U.S. and filtered out everything outside a bounding box around Snyder, Texas, where this most recent quake occurred. Now, I’m not sure if USGS changed the way it monitors quakes in the region or what, but there’s clearly a marked change here:
Year,Month,Day,Time(hhmmss.mm)UTC,Latitude,Longitude,Magnitude,Depth,Catalog
1977,11,28,014050.50,32.954,-100.837,3.5,5,PDE
1979,07,05,010501,32.949,-100.895,2.7,4,PDE
1984,09,19,061542.35,32.027,-100.688,3.0,5,PDE
1986,01,25,225024.96,32.064,-100.733,2.9,5,PDE
1986,01,30,222637.07,32.066,-100.693,3.3,5,PDE
2006,08,12,104909.67,32.895,-100.894,2.8,5,PDE
2008,01,29,102453.24,32.898,-100.842,3.3,5,PDE
2008,07,18,173109.40,32.891,-100.842,2.7,5,PDE
2008,07,18,203841.78,32.849,-100.771,2.7,5,PDE
2010,01,27,045933.05,32.902,-100.833,3.1,5,PDE
2010,04,12,002005.97,32.935,-100.875,2.8,5,PDE-W
2010,08,08,011238.07,32.896,-100.851,3.4,5,PDE-W
2010,08,25,020514.32,32.951,-100.861,2.8,5,PDE-W
2010,08,29,124836.61,32.912,-100.916,2.6,5,PDE-W
2010,10,09,074227.63,32.929,-100.886,3.1,5,PDE-W
2010,10,26,065629.79,32.922,-100.850,3.1,5,PDE-W
2010,11,01,091058.42,32.996,-100.816,2.8,5,PDE-W
2011,03,01,033012.76,32.876,-100.839,3.1,5,PDE-W
2011,03,01,063159.89,32.839,-100.802,2.5,5,PDE-W
2011,03,12,152200.86,32.882,-100.896,3.0,5,PDE-W
2011,03,13,201620.62,32.995,-100.767,3.8,5,PDE-W
2011,03,14,001948.80,32.964,-100.809,3.0,5,PDE-W
2011,03,19,233401.21,32.978,-100.766,3.0,5,PDE-W
2011,03,28,091211.95,32.913,-100.816,3.0,5,PDE-W
2011,04,25,165631.88,32.822,-100.844,2.5,5,PDE-W
2011,07,14,102913.60,32.928,-100.806,2.5,5,PDE-W
2011,09,11,122744.32,32.848,-100.769,4.3,5,PDE-Q
2011,09,11,183634.68,32.887,-100.807,2.5,5,PDE-Q
2011,09,11,203158.11,32.892,-100.848,2.7,5,PDE-Q
2011,09,12,003149.11,32.804,-100.878,2.7,5,PDE-Q
2011,09,12,022931.34,32.730,-100.848,2.5,5,PDE-Q
2011,09,12,091946.92,32.833,-100.831,2.6,5,PDE-Q
2011,09,12,092612.83,32.773,-100.850,2.7,5,PDE-Q
2011,09,12,141834.05,32.822,-100.871,3.4,7,PDE-Q
2011,09,13,072135,32.818,-100.789,2.6,5,PDE-Q
2011,11,24,064959.99,32.954,-100.812,2.8,5,PDE-Q
2011,11,24,231548.91,32.956,-100.817,3.0,5,PDE-Q
2011,12,09,184733.18,32.939,-100.881,3.5,3,PDE-Q
2011,12,17,144658.75,32.802,-100.857,3.2,5,PDE-Q
Of the 39 quakes with their epicenter in this bounding box, 30 have happened in the last two years. Anybody know what’s going on here?