A large earthquake struck near White Island this morning. The magnitude 5.7 quake, which struck at 5:22 a.m. on Sunday 4th May 2008, was located 170 km north-east of White Island at a depth of 170 km. The epicentre was 220 km north-east of Whakatane, 150 km north of Te Araroa.
The quake was reported felt in the Bay of Plenty, Poverty Bay area and in some Wellington suburbs.
[Compiled from data provided by the Geonet project and its sponsors EQC, GNS Science and FRST.]
What’s White Island up to? Any ideas?
The drum’s looking rather busy… inbetween the general noise that it normaly shows….
Good question. At times the drum seems to be showing continuous noise that could be caused by atmospherics interfering with the radio signal back to the mainland – they’ve had some heavy rain events in recent days.
But at other times it looks like long bursts of tremor are showing up on the White Island drum. Perhaps the monster has a spot of indigestion, but only an expert with full access to the instruments could tell.
It’s a pity that GNS Science stopped issuing regular reports on the health of our volcanoes a while back. I’m keeping an eye on the Alert Bulletin page at GeoNet in the meantime.
Yep – now most of that noise has gone (did water get in something?!) it’s clear white Island is up to something….. I wish they would give us an activity update!!