Nature’s fury

Christchurch just can’t catch a break. After thousands of earthquake aftershocks over the past several months, today they copped a swarm, including two major shocks, a 5.5 at 1pm and a 6.0 at 2:20pm. There were also a dozen smaller quakes between that 1pm jolt and the time I’m writing this, around 5½ hours later:

• 1pm: Magnitude 5.5 quake, 10km E of Christchurch, at a depth of 11km.
• 1:08pm: Magnitude 4.4 quake, 10km SE of Christchurch, at a depth of 11km.
• 1:28pm: Magnitude 3.4 quake, 10km SE of Christchurch, at a depth of 9km.
• 2:20pm: Magnitude 6 quake, 10km SE of Christchurch, at a depth of 9km.
• 2:40pm: Magnitude 4.9 quake, 10km E of Christchurch, at a depth of 10km.
• 2:50pm: Magnitude 3.4 quake, 10km SE of Christchurch, at depth of 6km.
• 3:08pm: Magnitude 3.7 quake, 20km E of Christchurch, at depth of 8km.
• 3:33pm: Magnitude 3.5, 20 km SE of Christchurch, at depth of 5km.
• 4:10pm: Magnitude 3.5, 20 km SE of Christchurch, at depth of 8km.
• 4:23pm: Magnitude 3.5, 10 km SE of Christchurch, at depth of 8km.
• 4:27pm: Magnitude 3.5, 10 km SE of Christchurch, at depth of 8km.
• 4:40pm: Magnitude 3.6 quake, 20km SE of Christchurch, at depth of 6km.
• 4:56pm: Magnitude 3.5 quake, 10km S of Christchurch, at depth of 5km.
• 6:11pm: Magnitude 3.3 quake, 20km SE of Christchurch, at depth of 9km.

The two big jolts were felt far away, but we don’t feel them in Auckland. Part of the reason for that is the fact we’re on a different tectonic plate than the Canterbury region is: They’re on the Pacific Plate and we’re on the Australian Plate. We’re also a very long way away.

By the time this is actually posted, there will probably be even more aftershocks. There's a widget on the right side of my blog which lists recent earthquakes in New Zealand. It links through to the GeoNet site, where more details about the earthquakes can be found.

As if that weren’t enough, air travel in this part of the world has been disrupted by the eruption of the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile on June 4. The ash shot up some 15,000 metres, high enough that weather didn’t cause it to break up. In about a week, the ash had crossed the South Atlantic, South Africa, the Indian Ocean, Tasmania and reached New Zealand. This week, it’ll get back to Chile again.

It’s created fiery red sunsets, especially in the South Island, and was apparently responsible for a giant ring around the moon in the skies over Auckland last night. Qantas and its subsidiary, Jetstar, cancelled flights, but Air New Zealand and other airlines didn’t, flying below the ash cloud and altering flight paths to avoid it. Thousands of people have had their travel plans disrupted, and it could be quite some time before things return completely to normal.

Sadly, nature isn’t done yet.