Thursday, January 06, 2011
Dead birds ===>> New Madrid 2?
The reports of dead birds continue coming in, and seem to be centering on the Missouri Bootheel.
What happens before a big quake? Magnetic and electric fields change quickly.
How do birds navigate? Magnetic fields, especially at night.
When magnetic fields move suddenly, birds get confused. (This is very well-known from observations near radio transmitters and similar sources.)
And we unfortunately know that the Missouri Bootheel has a history of quakes.
This makes far more sense than the stupid noisy-fireworks theory. If that were true, we'd notice dead flocks every New Year's and every July 4th, and we'd see them everywhere.
My first guess was that the birds were sucked up in a thunderstorm updraft, thrashed around, then slammed to the ground by a downdraft. That does happen occasionally, but Accuweather has eliminated the possibility in this case. ¶ 6:07 AM
What happens before a big quake? Magnetic and electric fields change quickly.
How do birds navigate? Magnetic fields, especially at night.
When magnetic fields move suddenly, birds get confused. (This is very well-known from observations near radio transmitters and similar sources.)
And we unfortunately know that the Missouri Bootheel has a history of quakes.
This makes far more sense than the stupid noisy-fireworks theory. If that were true, we'd notice dead flocks every New Year's and every July 4th, and we'd see them everywhere.
My first guess was that the birds were sucked up in a thunderstorm updraft, thrashed around, then slammed to the ground by a downdraft. That does happen occasionally, but Accuweather has eliminated the possibility in this case. ¶ 6:07 AM
