A data mining experience

Hands up who went to Spain in August '08? Well, I did with some friends after my mate's wedding. Last night while talking with the said mate, the topic of earthquakes came up somehow via me mentioning Aaron Rolston.

For a little context, I've visited this site a few times recently to see just how many quakes there are around the world every day - turns out a few dozen. Activity around Japan is just phenomenal.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.html

So back in Spain - one morning over breakfast, I remember a friend telling us about a news report about a nearby earthquake that occurred the night before while we were playing poker. He mentioned something at the time, not many of us noticed anything - might have been the San Miguel...

So I thought I'd look to see if I could track it down

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/epic/

This is a five day inclusive search around the world in August 2008 - I repeat, only 5 days worth:

So to find those just in Spain, I restricted the region in the search criteria.

The two in highlighted red in the report below are the ones that we were within possibly 3 kms of it, if I remember our exact location correctly. Two evening quakes just over an hour apart, 7km deep.

                    U.  S.  G E O L O G I C A L  S U R V E Y
                     E A R T H Q U A K E  D A T A  B A S E

 FILE CREATED:  Wed Apr 13 15:52:46 2011
 Geographic Grid Search   Earthquakes=         8
 Latitude:   50.000N  -   30.000N
 Longitude:    10.000E  -    20.000W
 Catalog Used: PDE
 Date Range:   2008/08/04   to    2008/08/08
 Data Selection: Historical & Preliminary Data


 CAT    YEAR  MO DA  ORIG TIME   LAT    LONG  DEP  MAGNITUDE  IEM DTSVNWG DIST
                                                              NFO          km
                                                              TF 
 PDE    2008  08 04 060910.21  42.10   -6.82  17  2.8 LgMDD   ... .......      
 PDE    2008  08 05 152121.24  37.00    3.42   0  4.0 UKMDD   ... .......      
 PDE    2008  08 05 224121.93  38.05   -0.78   7  3.5 MLSTR   3F. .......      
 PDE    2008  08 05 234123.44  38.07   -0.78   7  2.7 LgMDD   3F. .......       

 PDE    2008  08 07 090314.60  42.94   -1.33   2  2.5 MLLDG   ... .......      
 PDE    2008  08 07 103215.30  41.98    2.56   5  2.6 MLSTR   ... .......      
 PDE    2008  08 08 094711.30  42.36    3.45  10  2.5 LgMDD   ... .......      
 PDE    2008  08 08 225611.15  35.58   -4.70  65  2.8 UKMDD   ... .......

I had a look on google maps for the location, I think we stayed in Los Montesinos, Torrevieja - very close!

The internet is full of amazing information - sometimes it's just a matter of tapping into it, sometimes it's a matter of coming up with the idea.

ScottWe