US: 5.8 earthquake hits Virginia

Felt it here in Baltimore and reports of people feeling it all the way up to Boston!

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/23/quake-hits-near-washington-d-c/?hpt=hp_t2

I just called my mom when I saw all the posts on facebook.  Totally nuts!

Wow! How bizarre!

Seriously crazy! Highly unusual for this area. Not sure we've ever had such a big one. We thought our house was falling down!

Yup, we felt it in Cambridge, MA. I was in the stacks and noticed the shelving creaking and then my chair started juddering. Bet it was pretty scary further south.

And a hurricane on the way!?

It was crazy scary. I've never been in an earthquake before. I was sitting on the bed, reading, and the bed started to shake. I ran downstairs and we stood there trying to figure out what was going on (we live in the city, so lots of trucks, construction, etc). We went outside and chatted with neighbors after it was over and now I feel totally guilty because I forgot to grab the cat before I went downstairs. 

People here in Boston are talking about it and what they felt.  I didn't feel it, but then again, I've been walking around this place like a madwoman today.  Crazy.

I felt it here in the Philadelphia suburbs. I was talking to DF at the time. I said, "The whole house is shaking!"  He said, "Drinking so early in the day, luv? Tsk, tsk!" 

I felt it here at work in the Bronx, I thought I was getting heat stroke or something, I have never felt anything like that before, so my mind couldn't rationalize what was happening I guess....... Earthquakes, hurricanes, whats next! This is crazy.

I'm not far from the epicenter.  It was pretty freaky.  We had an earthquake here in 2003 (I didn't really "experience" it as I was driving down the road in VA Beach) and I found out then that we live right on top of a major faultline.  Awesome. 

We had a 4.2 aftershock a few hours ago.

There are usually a couple of earthquakes this size a decade in NYS, but they tend to be in the northern Adirondacks and rarely do they spread very far.  The regions of the country with moderate to high earthquake risk would probably surprise people, including smug westcoasters picking on easterners for being taken off guard by this:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/products/graphic2pct50.jpg

This series of quakes made church bells ring in Boston:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/events/1811-1812.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_New_Madrid_earthquake

I read (in Crack at the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester*) that part of the problem with the "milder" risk of earthquakes across the midwest is that the ground is soft soil, as opposed to the hard rock on the west coast, so a relatively low magnitude earthquake could flatten hundreds of square miles as the ground just keeps rippling.

I felt validated reading that as I've long maintained that my midwestern relatives are crazy to live in brick buildings and the first earthquake would bring it all down on their heads. They keep laughing at me 'cause they "never have earthquakes" but science is on my side.

*he explains that the midwest isn't a fault region, but like the center of a pie crust - as the edges move and shift the middle sometimes buckles

I didn't mean west coast people who thought that people were making a bigger deal out of the earthquake than was necessary are smug, but my twitter feed is full of people saying, "Oh, we just experienced a 3.9 quake this morning in California.  What will we do?"  Well, yeah.  First of all, that's a lot smaller in intensity, probably covered an area a fraction of the size, and Californians are prepared.  East coast people aren't.

Yeah, I have some of that in my twitter feed as well   My comment was in reply to the map.  Personally I think little/harmless earthquakes like this one are fun - you get an adrenaline rush, something to bond with random strangers over, a few days of "so how about that earthquake, eh?" and everyone moves on. I think it's nice that more of the country to see this side of earthquakes.

(but I still hate spending time in brick buildings)

I'd like to see LA deal with 15 inches of snow.  When that happens they can get back to me about earthqueakes.