Is it just us, or does it seem like earthquake activity has been particularly high this summer? Even while I’m writing to talk about a fascinating photograph of slope failures in Hokkaido, but also this morning was another major event near Fiji.

For those of you just interested in the photo, here’s a quick link:

Mudslides in a wide range by magnitude 6.7 earthquake(Atsuma, Hokkaido, Japan）
byu/maruhoi inCatastrophicFailure

Here’s the link to an article about the Hokkaido event and also, I believe, the photo’s source:

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0004713745

None of those failure are on the scale of the Oso landslide in Washington, but the cumulative volume is quite considerable. Thankfully the terrain is so steep that the area is sparsely populated.

So far this summer damage has been generally modest despite some of the earthquakes being quite large. Let’s just hope that it continues that way.