Ruapehu recording waves of little jolts

• Published date: 28 March 2024
• Publication title: Daily Post, The (Rotorua, New Zealand)

The volcano’s crater lake recently had a drop in temperature and the agency earlier this month observed minor earthquake activity it described in a statement yesterday as “quite uncommon for Ruapehu”

The Volcanic Alert Level remains at 1 and the Aviation Colour Code at Green.

“In early March 2024, we first observed an uncommon style of small earthquakes at Ruapehu. Subsequent re-examination of seismic data has revealed those earthquakes commenced at least as early as mid-February.

“The earthquakes are small and were initially difficult to identify without careful examination of the data.

“They are uncommon at Ruapehu and only the larger examples are detected by our automatic systems,” the statement said.

“Over the last month, we have seen a maximum of six of these earthquakes a day and, on many days, none at all.”

GNS said each earthquake consisted of up to about 10 minutes of ground shaking and was composed of “a number of similar sub-events”.

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