The Kent earthquake comes as no real surprise to me. This area is one of the most active areas for large earthquakes in the UK, albeit with long return times. The most significant events were on 21st May 1382 and 6th April 1580, both estimated at Local Magnitude 5.8. The latter caused much damage in the southeast of England and is one of Britain’s most fatal earthquakes with two apprentices being killed by falling masonry in a church in Newgate.
This region lies on the Artois (as in Stella) Axis, the lateral equivalent on the Variscan front that runs though South Wales and the Bristol Area – a fundamental lineament and a major zone of crustal weakness.
Note that at magnitude 4.3 today’s earthquake was about 180 times less powerful than the historic events (1 unit on the magnitude scale = ~32 x increase in power [10x amplitude]).
Note also that I’ve not mentioned the ‘Richter’ word – it only works in California with a Wood-Anderson seismograph!
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Nice to meet a fellow Greek, though I am not a geologist. Let’s hope Salonika and Halkidiki don’t have earthquakes when I visit next month.
Ellee,
I think you misunderstand. Using the moniker of hypocentre I thought that ‘hypo-theses’ was a clever play on words for the name of the blog – the greek bit is just the derivation of hypotheses.
I was born just north of L.A.
(Luton Airport)