Posted by E.D.G. April 21, 2004

Earthquake and tornado data evaluation computer program:
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/301.html

Newsgroup readers: Please forward copies of this report to any government
and private tornado groups that you know about and any news service weather
forecasters who you believe might be interested. Thanks.

SUMMARY: My data indicate to me that in some cases it is probably possible
to predict that a destructive tornado is going to occur as much as a week
before the tornado does actually occur.

This report will briefly discuss a destructive tornado which occurred on
April 20, 2004 in the north central part of the U.S. and focus on an
experimental Perl language computer program that I have developed for
evaluating earthquake and tornado precursor signal data.

This technology was discussed in detail in a presentation made at a natural
disaster mitigation conference held in the People's Republic of China in
late December of 2003. I was not able to attend that conference myself.
One of my research colleagues in that country had my reports etc. translated
into Chinese. And he delivered the presentation on my behalf. Several
years ago this technology was discussed in a short news report which was
circulated internationally.

The information in this report represents expressions of personal opinion.

Ladies, Gentlemen,

I have developed a free, downloadable Perl language computer program which
is intended for use in evaluating earthquake and tornado precursor data. I
also detect and circulate information regarding what I am confident are
earthquake precursor signals and what appear to me to be tornado precursor
signals. I expect that the earthquake related ones can probably be detected
by people around the world with currently available technology. They have
durations of as much as 20 seconds.

Tornado forecasters would probably find it impossible to detect the tornado
signals or even determine that they exist without my assistance as they
appear to have durations of only about 0.25 seconds. They seem to be
something like lightning bolts. There might be only one or just a few of
them generated before a tornado occurs. And the time delay between the
signals and the tornados could be minutes to as much as a week.

I would expect that if the tornado is not going to occur for a week then the
warning signals are not being generated by the funnel cloud itself. It does
not yet exist. Rather, my present theories propose that what is happening
is that geomagnetic storm energy is somehow responsible for the signals.
And when that type of energy is also present at the same time that certain
atmospheric conditions exist then that energy can interact with the
atmosphere and perhaps even the ground and eventually encourage tornado
formation.

The times that precursor signals are detected are entered into my data
evaluation program and it is told to begin a run. It then compares things
such as sun and moon location data associated with the warning signal time
with similar data for more than 20,000 past earthquakes and generates a list
which indicates which earthquakes were the best match with the warning
signal. They are given a "probability" number (PR) in my tables which have
values of 0 to 100 where 0 is the poorest match and 100 is the best one.

I detect earthquake precursor signals quite often throughout the year.
Tornado precursor signals are fairly rare. Two distinct tornado warning
type signals were detected probably several minutes apart at the following
time:

2004/04/13 14:08:00 UTC

When I entered that time into the latest version of my data evaluation
program which will probably be stored at my Web site later today and told it
to match the signal with past destructive earthquakes it gave a PR rating of
100 to one which occurred at 91W. The next highest PR rating, 95, went to
one which occurred at 83W. And the third highest PR rating, only 76, was
for an earthquake which occurred in some other part of the world.

My interpretation of those data is that they might be saying that the
tornado type warning signals that I detected last April 13 were in fact
pointing to the general area where the recent destructive April 20, 2004
tornado could occur. It reportedly claimed some eight lives. Those data
also suggest to me that important solar storm - geomagnetic storm -
earthquake fault zone- tornado, and tornado warning signal links might
exist.

I do not presently have a good understanding of these phenomena. And I am
also not presently doing too much research on them myself. Instead I am
focusing on getting information regarding my new computer program circulated
so that other researchers around the world can use it to collect and
evaluate earthquake, tornado, and warning signal data.

The following reports discuss theories and data related to these phenomena.

Earthquake triggering, precursors, and sensitivity
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/128.html

Earthquake data for the years 1990 through 2005
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/90-05.html

Information regarding my earthquake and tornado data evaluation computer
program can be found on the Web pages listed below:

NOTE: My data evaluation program is still experimental.

That is the case for both the type of data processing it does and the
computer code itself.

My program should run without problems on an IBM PC type computer running
the Windows XP operating system. I believe that it should also run on that
type of computer when it is using Windows 98. I don't know about other
systems and have been asking Perl language experts if they can get it to run
on their own systems.

You presently need to have the Perl language program running on your
computer to run that data evaluation program. Information on how to obtain
and install a copy of that program can be found in the following report:

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/301.html

If you an experienced computer programmer or you are familiar with the Perl
computer language then you will probably not have any difficulties with
getting my program running.

If you are not an experienced programmer then it would probably be best if
you asked someone who is to assist you with getting both the program and the
Perl language program running.

Some Perl programming language usage information which is intended for
people who are not experienced Perl programmers can be found at:

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/Perl.html

The Perl language commands found on that Web page do work. But for serious
Perl programming efforts people who are more experienced with that language
than I am should be consulted. A compiled Basic language version of my data
evaluation program is being prepared by a professional computer programmer.
I myself have several degrees in the physical sciences and work as a
professional analyst. But I have only limited amounts of experience with
computer programming and with the Perl language.

How to download the data evaluation computer program etc.:
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/301.html

Theories related to data evaluation computer program operation:
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/302.html

Interpreting the data evaluation computer program output data:
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/303.html

That 303.html Web page contains a listing of the source code for a version
of the program which was in use several days ago. It is evolving quite
rapidly.

Demonstration and complete versions of the program are presently stored in
zip format files at my Web site:

A demonstration version of the program:
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/311.zip

The latest complete earthquake and tornado database file:
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/312.zip

The complete sun, moon, ocean tide, and Solid Earth Tide database file:
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/313.zip

The 311.zip file contains a complete demonstration version of the program as
well as a ReadMe file which explains how to run the program and interpret
some of the output data. The 312.zip and 313.zip files have to be
downloaded for normal program operation. Most of the files download fairly
quickly. However, the 313.zip file which is roughly 4 million bytes in size
will probably require more than an hour to download because of the slow data
transfer speed associated with that Web site. Fortunately it needs to be
downloaded only once.

I circulate international earthquake warnings several times a year. And
several years ago I was sending occasional tornado advisories to weather
forecasting personnel here in the U.S. But for some unknown reason at a
certain point in time the tornado related signals were dramatically reduced
in number while the earthquake warning signals continued to be detected.

I was hoping to have my data evaluation program running and information
regarding it circulated to U.S. and international researchers before our
season for destructive tornados got underway here in the U.S. And the
program has in fact been running for several weeks now with a downloadable
version available at my Web site for about a week. But so far only limited
amounts of information have been circulated regarding the program.

Finally, people should be aware that in its present form my program does not
predict earthquakes and tornados. It is instead intended to be both a
research tool and a resource for determining the general locations where
precursor signals are being generated. After earthquake and tornado
forecaster have that location information they will then still need to use
other procedures to tell exactly when and where the expected earthquake or
tornado is going to occur.