I was ignoring geology, but....

[nancylebov]

....geology wasn't ignoring me.

I saw the walls shaking gently a little before 2PM, and assumed it was construction. I went downstairs, and found a bunch of neighbors standing in their entrances, but no heavy equipment. We concluded it was an earthquake.

I was on the phone to someone in New York, and he felt the quake a few minutes later.

Everything's fine here, and my best wishes for people closer to the epicenter.

Comments

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

We're fine here in DC, except that Steve's going to have a hellacious commute home. Metro's only running at 15 m.p.h.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

A co-worker felt it here in London, Ontario. I, however, didn't and I'm only one partition away.

The NY Times has more on it right now, as do the Montreal Gazette and Hamilton Spectator though their focus is more on local reaction.

-- Steve's wondering if he's noticing more of these events because he's more wired than before, or if they actually are happening more frequently.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Minutes? Sure that wasn't seconds? (The shock waves propagate pretty fast.)

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

In the Loma Prieta earthquake, there was sometimes several minutes between a shock down here (in Santa Cruz, less than twenty miles from the epicenter) and when people felt it in San Francisco (about eighty miles from the epicenter).

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that's interesting. (I remember the San Francisco one, which took eight seconds to travel the fifty miles from the epicenter to us . . . once the TV stations came on, we knew when one was coming when they jolted, and then eight seconds later it hit us.) But it makes sense that the shock waves would travel more slowly through different types of terrain.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Where were you? I'm imagining the fifty mile radius from Loma Prieta. That gives me . . . the northern end of the peninsula, some places in the South Bay, and something south of Morgan Hill.

I think eight seconds sounds realistic for most of the aftershocks. I do remember some phone conversations with my stepmother where I would feel the shock and later she would, and most of the time it was soon after, while sometimes it was a few minutes.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I got dyslexic--San Fernando Valley, not San Francisco. I'm down in Orange County.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Sure enough-- I saw the shaking here, took a bit to realize it was real and get annoyed that it was excessive construction, say something about it on the phone, and put the phone down to go downstairs.

When the phone conversation was re-started, the person in New York said it took a few minutes after I went away to happen there.

However, we can probably find more people who can do a time check for how fast it propagated.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I'm actually quite relieved. I've been concerned about the inevitability of earthquakes in your corner of the world because they are rare and you guys are not prepared for them, and I thought that a lot of architecture back there would not stand up to even a small earthquake (in the 3 range). So the fact that there is so far so little damage in a medium earthquake is really a pleasant surprise.

I hope the aftershocks are not too bad!

[inquisitiveravn.livejournal.com]

There's a discussion of shockwave propagation speed here. Apparently, it can vary quite a lot depending on what the shockwaves are being transmitted through. Also, earthquakes apparently generated four different kinds of shockwaves, each of which travels at a different speed. Note: None of this is specific to yesterday's VA quake. For that, I think we need to find out if there were seismographs in enough different locations make a calculation. One thing I did gather though, is that the shockwaves propagate faster through harder materials.