Aftershocks Update

Several friends have questioned my sanity about traveling to Chengdu this weekend. Even though it's still a huge disaster area, I think further threat to Chengdu is minimal. I've been following the aftershocks on USGS and so far, there are 53 major aftershocks.



However, being a numerical analysis geek, I plotted all 54 events (including the initial earthquake) by magnitude and date/time. The time scale only covers 4 days but it's pretty clear that the frequency and magnitude of the aftershocks is decreasing. On the downside, I read that there are 1200+ dead and ~6000 injured in Chengdu.



In comparison, here is the same scale map for California.