My Rock GeoJournal

 I live in the beautiful state of Wyoming. We have a lot of natural resources in this state that includes Coal, Petroleum, Natural Gas (Methane Gas).  We also have a lot of wind in Wyoming so there are a lot of Windmill farms that have popped up over the last decade. I work in the oil and gas industry, it's provided a stable job which my family and I have been blessed to raise our family with. In the field I currently work in there is also a windfarm. Along the many oil wells are many more windmills that are spinning around or not spinning around depending on the day, than oil wells that are visible. It's not uncommon to have a oil well pad and just up the road less than 1/4 of a mile a couple of windmills. The footprint of the oil industry is vastly smaller than that of windmill farms. On a given oil well pad we'll have anywhere from 3 to 12 oil wells on one location. When the wells are no longer economical we'll plug those wells according to government regulations and...

This week we're focusing on Mid-Oceanic ridges. I'm just learning about mid-oceanic ridges, so I'm not sure if I'm completely off base here, or if I'm remotely close. In this week's learning I'm not sure if I found it more fascinating that people actually have discovered this part of the world or if I was fascinated more by wondering if there was a way to watch the formation of mid-oceanic ridges and trenches in real time, with a time lapse. I looked at plate tectonics over by the Philippines and found it pretty interest. Here's a screenshot from Google Earth and what I hope I was able to identify.

 We're looking at Plate Tectonics in the News! In this article I found, it talks about the Snowy Range Mountains that are south of Laramie Wyoming and have phenomenal fishing. This article explains that there were two convergent plate collisions over two billion years in what we know in Wyoming as the Snowy Range. One collision happened and then another happened in the same area that lifted the range again. I personally found the article very interesting and I hope you do too! https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/the-story-of-the-snowy-range-2-collisions-and-2-billion-years/article_c5041b52-2805-5b04-b95e-af520b1082c0.html

 This week we are studying Earthquakes! I find this subject pretty interesting and was surprised to see we had an earthquake 146 miles from my house within the last 30 days. It was so surprising I had my wife come look at the map. I was not expecting an earthquake so close to where I live. I did expect to see some in Yellowstone National Park and so this did not surprise me as there were 5 in the last 30 days. Here are some screenshots (I'm sorry if they aren't very clear) to show where this earthquake happened. I live in Glenrock, Wyoming. This earthquake was 32 miles south of the town of Ten Sleep. It registered at a 3.7 magnitude earthquake. Ten sleep is 146 miles or 3 hours from my town. (In Wyoming because it's so many miles from town to town, we usually quote distances in hours it takes to get there. For example from my house if somebody asks me how far Cheyenne is we just say 2 hours.) Given this new information, I still feel relatively safe where I live. I remember ...