As if Hurricane Irene’s menacing approach wasn’t enough, an earthquake of preliminary magnitude 5.9 struck northeastern Virginia about 20 minutes ago, and — as is typical for earthquakes in the eastern two-thirds of the country — was felt far & wide, from Toronto to the Deep South. I haven’t heard any damage reports yet. (I just learned about this via a text message from my mother-in-law, of all people.) But an earthquake of that magnitude in that part of the country could, I would think, cause some actual damage. Don’t laugh, Californians.
East Coast readers, did you feel it? Was there any damage?
[UPDATE, 1:24 PM: There has been damage to the National Cathedral. Coverage here. Also, there are reports that the Washington Monument is tilting. Um, #PANIC!?! … Oh, also, Gizmodo is collecting quake videos.]
P.S. Incidentally, this follows on the heels of Colorado’s largest earthquake since 1967, which hit near Trinidad (in the southern part of the state, near the New Mexico border) late last night, just about the time I was going to bed. It was a 5.3, and no, I didn’t feel it.
P.P.S. About the “felt far & wide” thing, here’s a bit more, from a 2008 blog post:
If you’re a Californian wondering how on earth [a relatively minor earthquake] could be felt so strongly, and in places [so] far afield … , it’s because, as explained here, “seismic waves in the East travel farther and pack more destructive punches.” The exact reason for this phenomenon is a topic of much debate among scientists, but “one explanation is that eastern geology is older and simpler, with fewer faults in the ground to slow the travel of quake waves.” See also here:
Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast.
That point is graphically illustrated here:
Of course, [today’s earthquake] is nothing compared to the Big One that will someday destroy Memphis and cause massive devastation all across the [central and eastern U.S.].
UPDATE: On phone with my parents. They felt it. Dad: “I was sitting at the computer table, and mom was in the kitchen. And the computer table starts to shake.” It felt like the way it would if mom was sitting at the table fidgeting and shaking it with her legs — but she wasn’t there. “Then I look and see the floor lamp is wobbling. ‘F***. Leanna, there’s an earthquake!'” Mom thinks shaking lasted 30 seconds, Dad thinks two minutes.
UPDATE 2: On the LRT Facebook page, a similar report from my friend Diane Krause in Hartford, CT: “Felt it!! Josh has some restless leg issues, so it’s not uncommon for me to accuse of him of ‘shaking the house’ but this time he stopped moving entirely and the whole house really WAS shaking!! Only lasted a minute or two, we figured it was construction or something until I checked my facebook and saw all the quake statuses.”
P.P.P.S. I suspect, by the time the evening news rolls around, we’ll be hearing that the earthquake was “felt from Canada to Florida, and as far west as Illinois,” or something like that.
P.P.P.P.S. Some folks, in New York City and elsewhere, saw tweets about the earthquake before the felt the acutal earthquake, for reasons explained by Gizmodo here.
Meanwhile, it seems some folks want to be mayor of the earthquake.
UPDATE: Heh:
Police departments in greater Hartford said that the earthquake resulted in a flood of phone calls, although none reporting injuries or damage.
East Hartford police said that they received “about 9 million phone calls,” reporting the shaking, while West Hartford police said they were inundated with descriptions of ground shaking. In Glastonbury and Manchester, dispatchers were similarly tied up, taking call after call from residents eager to report the quake.
