East Coast Earthquake

Did not experience one where I am but CNN reported a 5.3 in southern CO. this morning.

The USGS has reported a series of seven earthquakes this morning (probably after-shocks???)

Yes shook the ground and building pretty good here.

Reported 5.9 east of Charlottesville Va.

In downtown Charlottesville, the walls were shaking, and the sound was a mixture of jets, trains and tornadoes. I've been surprised by the variability of sound that people experienced at different locations. It was loud here, as if the structures themselves were groaning. Is that realistic?

The building definitely shook here in Clifton Park! A girl I work with said she didn't know what was happening and thought she was about to pass out. Luckily, everyone was fine in the end...just giddy when it was all over.

Did not notice it in Brecksville, Ohio.

Milo

CNN just began running a ticker on my cell phone news page at 2:11PM CT about the east coast quake that took place at 1:53PM according to CNN

Hope everyone is OK!

Definitely felt it in central CT!

It seemed like the floor was moving back and forth 6 inches....

Not something I am used to in CT!

Felt like three freight trains passing at the same time. Windows and walls creaked. If there was any movement it was maybe an inch. I felt like I was in the '70's again.

Yeah my thought first it was the train the building here is close to the CSX line. But when it intensified knew it was an earthquake. That and some of those out on the floor yelling and running like chickens with there heads cut off. Had to tell them to clear the building. Guess have to let that pass don't think I have every felt one that shook that much. One of the biggest here that I remember. Most you barely notice the ground shake before it's over if you notice it at all.

Had a service man work on lift equipment on the lot he said he had to get out of it's way because it was dancing across the ground.

Those in the second story offices said the suspended ceiling was moving pretty good.

It shut down two reactors at nuclear power plant in Virginia. Lake Anna Facility which is just north of the center.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/23/virginia.quake.nuclear/

Definitely felt it here. Haven't felt one since living in CA...............didn't really miss them either. Although, thinking about the energy involved to make the ground move up and down the east coast is mind boggling.

Looks like there's a good chance we get a hurricane later this week too. Yippie!!

_{Is it locust season yet?}

I live about 60 miles WNW of the epicenter, but just on the west side of the Blue Ridge Mountains which separates this town from Central Virginia. I was working at my computer when I noticed my monitors shaking. I at first thought we had some high winds coming through which will sometimes shake the house.

Then I heard the noise and felt the floor moving laterally, maybe about an inch. All in all it lasted about 30 seconds.

Seems like maybe the Blue Ridge buffered some of the shock locally. I talked to people who work about 10 miles west of me in the center of the Shenandoah Valley and they described a heavier shaking than I got.

It certainly got my attention but after listening to news reports it seems the authorities in the cities highly over-reacted.

Hooker

That was not an earthquake, Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers were turning over in their graves....

Hope everybody enjoyed a little political humor.

Well, I enjoyed it.

I think they've been spinning for quite awhile. Jefferson just hit the momentum event horizon first.

Hooker

Nothing here in Washington (state)...

Well I felt it yesterday. So did my wife, my step-daughter and my sister-in-law and her daughter. We were visiting my sister-in-law in Ocean, NJ which is just south of Asbury Park on the Jersey Shore. My elderly mother-in-law afterwards says she didn't feel it at all, but she was outside sitting down on a patio chair.

I had just sat down on my sister-in-law's office chair (the type that has wheels) in the Living Room, which has a wooden floor. A minute later the quake began and the chair kept sliding back and forth on the wooden floor. At first I though that a large truck went by on the street she lives on, but I knew that I hadn't heard a truck rumble by at all. Then I kept seeing the top of the floor lamp next to the computer desk wildly oscillating back and forth at the same frequency at the chair motion. Initially I though there's something drastically wrong with this house (I had never been there before). It was then that I knew we were experiencing an earthquake! Even felt the aftershock too.

When it happened, my sister-in-law and her kiddo were at the beach. She reported later that people there got very quit all of a sudden......then some woman started screaming that a Tidal Wave was on it's way! People started reacting wildly to this screaming by packing up their belonging very quickly and running off the beach to their cars or rentals! Wild Chit indeed, just like screaming "FIRE" in a movie theatre! I wish I had been there to videotape it all. No way was that quake strong enough to generate a huge Tidal Wave!!!!

Anyhow, the local NJ TV news reported that the quake magnitude in northern NJ was around an estimated 3.5 on the Richter Scale (I think it was measured at Rutgers University up in N. Brunswick). Yeah, I have to agree with that assessment. Of course they, and the NYC TV News programs, dramatized the Chit out of the quake and make peeps go into an unnecessary panic mode, as usual!!! LOL My wife, a street smart and hardened former Long Islander was laughing her ass off at the news accounts and how they made a mountain out of a mole hill.....again and again!

I've been in several earthquakes in the past in the Northeast. The last one I do remember was I think in 1985 which had an Epicenter around Blue Mountain Lake up in the Adirondack Mtns.. I was working in Albany back then, down on Broadway which is close to the Hudson River, an area of the city that once was the old wharf area and subsequently filled-in. The general underlaying soil is a "squishy blue-grey clay", much like toothpaste in consistency. The depth of the clay varies down there, and can go as far as 200 feet or so deep. Perfect "Jello" soil for shaking old masonry buildings apart during an earthquake! I never flew down those 3 stories of stairs as fast as that day! That old 1830-ish building never shook so much before or after that quake and it scared the Chit outta me!!! LOL

I got this damage report from Virginia.

Missed the whole thing. The news-people were terrified, however.

another one, Thursday AM, pretty strong. I'm guessing around 5 Richter. This is getting interesting. Charlottesville, VA.

About an hour east of Asheville, NC. Felt it pretty good here. No damage reported anywhere around here on the news or web.