Tuesday Earthquakes: Beaverton And Off The Oregon Coast

Let’s go in chronological order on this one.

At 7:14pm, on Tuesday January 29, 2013, a magnitude 5.3 earthquake happened under the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

This quake was only about six miles deep–much shallower than most of the quakes we’ve seen in recent times off the Oregon Coast. It was about 180 miles southwest of Newport. As of this writing, it’s one of the 13 strongest earthquakes in the world so far in 2013. I mean, the year is only 29 days old, but it’s still worth a mention. We had a stronger quake off our coast just last year.

Almost exactly one hour after the quake off the Oregon Coast (isn’t that weird?) we had a micro-quake under Beaverton.

This was very close to SW 160th and Hart Road, if you’re familiar with that area. I can’t remember seeing any micro-quakes right here before–although they certainly have happened in the Beaverton area in the past. One thing that’s interesting is that we have hidden faults all over southwest Washington and northwest Oregon, especially in the metro area. Why? Massive amounts of sediment from the Missoula Flood hides many of them.

Sometimes we only realize these Willamette Valley earthquake faults exist when we have an earthquake on them.

Gee, that’s a comforting thought….