MALAGA WEATHER UPDATE Friday 11th July 2014: LFWW WEATHER WARNING FOR HIGH TEMPERATURES..........Good morning all and welcome to more new members and to another glorious day.......We are starting today with a that warning as we are going to see temperatures way up in the 30s today towards those record breaking numbers however, cloud cover will kick off the daybalong the coastal fringes particularly in the far west of the province and for those of you travelling that way, out Gibraltar direction. This cloud will burn off but may again be reluctant if it thickens!!!.......Winds will be generally light according to predictions but I think we are going to see gusty draughts developing up the Guadalhorce Valley and Antequera this afternoon caused by the heat.......And tomorrow onwards I see nothing scanning the medium and long range charts except baking sunshine at this time. However, we continue to monitor the weather just so you can sit back and relax!!!......Ye right!!!......If you think this is fun in the sun forget it. In all this heat we must remain vigilant for wild fires and for all you new members, please flick back through the postings and see what we are about and the efficiency at which the members do their stuff........and that now includes you together with each and every one of us, new, old and myself, decrepit!!!......Now, as you may have gathered, this group keeps a close eye on fires that break out, which at this time of year is silly season for that, and we watch for weather threat, and trust me when I say, come a weather threat thats when these weather updates really come into their own!!!......But we are generally looking out for any threat, predictable or not, that can and will reflect on the members of this group, their safety and indeed the safety of others. As such, again scrolling back to just the other day, you will see a posting on a deep earthquake that occurred just across the border in Granada province. Again much useful information was posted by members on this subject!!!......So, welcome to another one of Jims master classes in edjumacation!!!.......I recently spoke of what to do in an Emergency, and before that we covered an amazing timeline on the massive fire in Competa that really underlined the efficiency of the emergency services and just how lucky we are to have such a great service out there looking after us in this fine country!!!........And go back a two or three weeks and you will find an amazing series of master classes on where your drinking water actually comes from.....many surprises there!!!......So, what about Earthquakes and Tremors???.......Well, The Spanish Government has it covered of course!!!.......The Instituto Geografica National (IGN) mans a 24hour control room monitoring a network of motion, noise and accelerometer sensors installed across the country and out in the islands. They even monitor Volcanoes on the Canarys!!!.......Earthquakes, like wild fires, are very much unpredictable, and Spain suffers a very large amount of smaller earthquakes that are often felt and referred to as tremors. However, Spain has suffered some very large earthquakes in its time that has resulted in loss of life.......Why?.......Well, the Spanish mainland is part of the Eurasian tectonic plate, a chunk of planet earths crust that we and all of Europe and much of Asia lives on. To the south our neighbours in Morroco sit mainly on the African tectonic plate and therefore up the middle sits a crack, a fault line!!!.......This fault line does not run up the middle of the straights of Gibraltar as is often depicted, but here in southern Spain and northern Morroco we have two fault lines that run inland into both countries.....and Yes, Malaga is piggy in the middle together with Granada and a number of other provinces!!!.......The earths crust moves continually and it is this movement that causes these quakes and tremors. The fact that Spain, and indeed Malaga and Granada Provinces, sits on or close to two cracks means we get our fair share of them. spain has another zone in the Pyrenees that is acting as a shock absorber!!!.......However, before you start panicking and remembering what goes on in places like Japan which also sits on the Eurasian plate and a fault line, our end of the Eurasian plate is not crashing into the African plate, a motion that is happening in Japan and the neighbouring plates in that area!!!......The Eurasian and African plates are actually spreading apart!!!......please see comments for further graphics on this.......But this brings us nicely to the main graphic of this post!!!.....No, its not the latest fire threat level, its not even todays temperature forecast.......Its denoting the areas of high probability of earthquakes in Spain likely to cause damage to property and therefore life, and as you can see if you are good at maps, a large chunk of Malaga Province and neighbouring Granada Province is red hot!!!......So, that 4.1 earthquake the other day just over in Granada Province and felt as far afield as Fuengirola in the west, Alameda in the north and over in Almeria Province in the East, now comes as no surprise. As a 4.1 magnitude earthquake as measured on the Richter Scale (see graphic in comments for info on this scale of measurement) this quake was approaching severe. However, its saving grace was that it was 65 kilometres down into the earths crust and therefore all we felt was the shock waves from it that were minor in retrospect!!!......If that type of quake was shallow we couldve been looking at serious damage, and dare I say it, loss of life and displacement of communities as a worst case!!!......That is why those great guys and girls who sit and train daily as part of the Military Emergency Unit (UME - Unidad Militar de Emergencias) are there......they are not only to assist if need be in forest fires, they are there for disaster relief.....again, the UME subject has been covered in the not too distant past and we will revisit it again in the reasonably near future.......but the UME can erect a small town of temporary accommodation including medical facilities, they have the equipment ready to move in to clear rubble, they are trained search and rescue personnel and, just as important, bring with them food, water and vital communications......all of which could be lost in a major quake.......So, having given you all sleepless nights may I re-focus your attention back to what we can actually set our sites on, and that is wild fires......no point worry about earthquakes until they happen; and besides, youve got more chance of being hit by a train than dying in an Earthquake!!!.......So, dare I say, have a great day and perhaps we will talk next week on what to do here in Spain in an Earthquake!!!......Jim Fraser for the Local Fire & Weather Watch Network :)
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 02:06:19 +0000