The quakes at Mount St Helens are gradually increasing in strength, now up to 3.5 magnitude. The mountain is now venting steam and some ash. Even scientists are now saying an eruption is imminent. Central California is still rumbling significantly, around 5.0 with scads of lower level rumbles in between. This seismic activity is actually occurring on at least three different fault lines.

Although I seriously expected this sort of thing because of the Toutatis passage, I could never determine where the activity would be in the world. My suspicion was the US, but that was an intuitive and not an educated guess. I knew it depended on the weak surface points and what was on the tangent between the Earth's EMF and the asteroid's EMF, or at the very least, the angles involved.

My point is that a space object does not have to hit another to make an impression. This point seems to have escaped the scientific community, or they're just not talking about it. Then again, they're into precision, so if they can't predict precisely, they don't usually count it. The other problem is specialization. We have quake guys, volcano guys, hurricane guys, and asteroid guys. But they don't talk to each other or look at what the others are doing? Maybe it takes a layman (or woman;) to stand back from the gauges far enough to see the bigger picture.

Imagine two magnets. Imagine one is spherical and rotating regularly (Earth) and one is quite oddly shaped and tumbling erratically (Toutatis). One is greatly larger than the other. Both are in regular orbits. Their orbits nearly intersect and they travel somewhat together for a time because they're on approximately the same orbital plane and share part of their elliptical paths.

Now, just try to guess where the pressure between the two magnetic fields will begin, where it will be strongest, where it will start to fade as the two magnets pull away from each other again.

It certainly appears now that the median of the interactive forces was/is the west coast of the US. Maybe even in a sweep of the northern hemisphere between Japan (record tsunamis) and North America (quakes and volcanic activity). It may even be a matter of disturbing the general and infamous weakness of the Pacific Ring of Fire, but focused along the northern portion because of the Earth's angle of rotation.

And now we'll see what happens when that applied pressure is relieved, ie, as the lid comes off the tapper kettle.

If we really want to understand the Earth, we also need to look at the neighborhood, with the same eyes.