I just read that West Texas experienced its third earthquake in less than a month. Intrigued, I grabbed USGS earthquake data for the continental U.S. and filtered out everything outside a bounding box around Snyder, Texas, where this most recent quake occurred. Now, I’m not sure if USGS changed the way it monitors quakes in the region or what, but there’s clearly a marked change here:



Year,Month,Day,Time(hhmmss.mm)UTC,Latitude,Longitude,Magnitude,Depth,Catalog

1977,11,28,014050.50,32.954,-100.837,3.5,5,PDE

1979,07,05,010501,32.949,-100.895,2.7,4,PDE

1984,09,19,061542.35,32.027,-100.688,3.0,5,PDE

1986,01,25,225024.96,32.064,-100.733,2.9,5,PDE

1986,01,30,222637.07,32.066,-100.693,3.3,5,PDE

2006,08,12,104909.67,32.895,-100.894,2.8,5,PDE

2008,01,29,102453.24,32.898,-100.842,3.3,5,PDE

2008,07,18,173109.40,32.891,-100.842,2.7,5,PDE

2008,07,18,203841.78,32.849,-100.771,2.7,5,PDE

2010,01,27,045933.05,32.902,-100.833,3.1,5,PDE

2010,04,12,002005.97,32.935,-100.875,2.8,5,PDE-W

2010,08,08,011238.07,32.896,-100.851,3.4,5,PDE-W

2010,08,25,020514.32,32.951,-100.861,2.8,5,PDE-W

2010,08,29,124836.61,32.912,-100.916,2.6,5,PDE-W

2010,10,09,074227.63,32.929,-100.886,3.1,5,PDE-W

2010,10,26,065629.79,32.922,-100.850,3.1,5,PDE-W

2010,11,01,091058.42,32.996,-100.816,2.8,5,PDE-W

2011,03,01,033012.76,32.876,-100.839,3.1,5,PDE-W

2011,03,01,063159.89,32.839,-100.802,2.5,5,PDE-W

2011,03,12,152200.86,32.882,-100.896,3.0,5,PDE-W

2011,03,13,201620.62,32.995,-100.767,3.8,5,PDE-W

2011,03,14,001948.80,32.964,-100.809,3.0,5,PDE-W

2011,03,19,233401.21,32.978,-100.766,3.0,5,PDE-W

2011,03,28,091211.95,32.913,-100.816,3.0,5,PDE-W

2011,04,25,165631.88,32.822,-100.844,2.5,5,PDE-W

2011,07,14,102913.60,32.928,-100.806,2.5,5,PDE-W

2011,09,11,122744.32,32.848,-100.769,4.3,5,PDE-Q

2011,09,11,183634.68,32.887,-100.807,2.5,5,PDE-Q

2011,09,11,203158.11,32.892,-100.848,2.7,5,PDE-Q

2011,09,12,003149.11,32.804,-100.878,2.7,5,PDE-Q

2011,09,12,022931.34,32.730,-100.848,2.5,5,PDE-Q

2011,09,12,091946.92,32.833,-100.831,2.6,5,PDE-Q

2011,09,12,092612.83,32.773,-100.850,2.7,5,PDE-Q

2011,09,12,141834.05,32.822,-100.871,3.4,7,PDE-Q

2011,09,13,072135,32.818,-100.789,2.6,5,PDE-Q

2011,11,24,064959.99,32.954,-100.812,2.8,5,PDE-Q

2011,11,24,231548.91,32.956,-100.817,3.0,5,PDE-Q

2011,12,09,184733.18,32.939,-100.881,3.5,3,PDE-Q

2011,12,17,144658.75,32.802,-100.857,3.2,5,PDE-Q



Of the 39 quakes with their epicenter in this bounding box, 30 have happened in the last two years. Anybody know what’s going on here?