Oklahoma earthquake startled so many birds they showed up on radar

Oklahoma has seen thousands of earthquakes in the past few years, mainly due to oil and gas drilling activities. Thursday morning featured a particularly intense magnitude 4.7 quake that hit near Cherokee, Oklahoma, at about 1:47 a.m. Central Time.

The earthquake did not cause significant damage, but it did wake people up across Oklahoma and several nearby states. It also frightened so many birds that, when they took to the skies en masse, they showed up on the National Weather Service's Doppler Radar.

Such radar is normally used to track storms, not wildlife, let alone wildlife associated with a geological hazard.

Radar often detects large groups of birds and insects, but this event was unique in that it demonstrated a direct effect of the earthquake.


The earthquake was the strongest in the state since 2011, and came during a month in which the state has seen more magnitude 4.0 or greater earthquakes than in any month on record, according to local TV station KOCO.

A study published in the journal Science in June found that many of the earthquakes that have occurred with increasing regularity since 2009 are associated with wastewater injection wells. Such wells deposit water, salt water, gases or other materials from oil and gas drilling into rock formations underneath the Earth.

Such wells are used to bury waste or to enhance oil and gas drilling by forcing more to rise to the surface.

The study found more than 18,700 injection wells associated with earthquakes in the central U.S., mainly in Oklahoma and Texas, with a tripling of such wells since 2000.


Another study, this one from the Oklahoma Geological Survey, found that earthquakes are occurring about 600-times more frequently than they typically would be in Oklahoma. The study concluded that the huge increase in earthquakes is "very unlikely the result of a natural process."

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