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Merged 5.9 Quake Hits Virginia

Thanks to Twitter, we have an exclusive look at the devastation of the Metro DC area

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(via @BYT)
 
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MattusMaximus said:
Just go to the comment section on any online news story about the quake and you'll find plenty of Bible-beating loons proclaiming this to be God's judgment, yadda yadda...

What's really nice is to see the comments from people reacting to these idiots :)
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Yes, sounds all very classy, mature and worthwhile. :rolleyes: Comments sections of such things are notoriously idiotic and obnoxious from all sides.

Anyway, far as I can tell essentially no damage has occurred due to this, or precious little, let alone casualties.
 
LibraryLady said:
Before we closed, I understand that someone called our telephone reference service and asked if we were having an earthquake.

No. I'm not joking.
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Happens here in CA all the time.
Folks can't finger out things for themselves, and need to be told by an official.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'm a west coaster and we are not as blase as some people pretend. You never know when that first jolt is just the beginning and you never know if it was worse nearby where other people you know might have been.
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The aftershock jobber-dos aren't all that bad, but the first one of the bunch... Will this be IT?!?!?!?...
7's and higher really get to shaking the place.
And I noticed in Burbank in '71, the birds and animals would shut right up, just a few seconds before an aftershock was noticeable.
 
AdMan said:
I've been in a number of quakes including today's, but never outside. It must be quite interesting to actually see waves going across the ground. The waves really moved slowly enough to see them?
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Not slowly at all, but visible, especially across a dry lake bed.
With the nukes, knowing it was going to occur helped getting prepared.
 
shawmutt said:
I was in a building and thought it was someone rolling a piece of heavy equipment down the hallway.

...that's no equipment...

...then it was over.

I held off celebrating my first earthquake survival until I was able to assess the severity. All in all I give it a 4.5 on the coolness scale. Kinda make a person feel small when this rock shakes like that.
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After a big one, buildings with flexible floors are NOT fun to be in, when the floors move for whatever reason after that!
 
I Ratant said:
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Not slowly at all, but visible, especially across a dry lake bed.
With the nukes, knowing it was going to occur helped getting prepared.
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I would guess that the key criteria for seeing transverse (vertical) waves would be an expansive and uninterrupted but very foreshortened view of the ground, pretty much requiring very flat ground, so standing on a dry lake bed at ground level would be ideal.

Seeing longitudinal waves would need almost the opposite, you'd want to be looking down from high above, on ground with a lot of texture to make movements more visible, but even then those might be too hard to see with eyeballs alone.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
MattusMaximus said:
Damn it all, we clearly need to invade the Earth's core and show those Lava Men who's boss! :mad:
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Your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder. And I wouldn't flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone that you saw anything yesterday but a natural tremor...because if you do, you're a dead man...
 
I visited California in 2000 (I think), when a large earthquake hit an unpopulated desert area within the state. According to news reports, the intensity was comparable to yesterday's Virginia quake, with an epicenter about 150 miles from my location.

I didn't feel a thing. Had it not been for the news reports, I wouldn't have known about it at all.

Maybe California gets magnitude 5.9 quakes more often, but those quakes don't seem to have wide-ranging effect.

During the quake yesterday, I was at least 500 miles from the epicenter, and felt the effect plainly. I called my parents in Iowa right after the quake and (having no way of knowing where the epicenter was) told them that there had been an earthquake in Canada and that we were all right. Knowing my parents, if they heard on the news that there had been an earthquake in Canada, they'd be wondering about my (and my family's) safety. I was actually stunned to learn that the epicenter was in Virginia.

I now understand that one of the interestings thing about this quake was not so much its intensity but the geographical scope of its effects. An event over 500 miles away caused buildings to wobble. It was a remarkable demonstration of how much energy there is even in a "small" earthquake.
 
Brown said:
Have fun today. When you're in a crowded area, point to a random place on the building and say out loud, "Say, has that crack ALWAYS been there??"
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I always do that on ferris wheels and other rides. "Say, is that bolt supposed to be missing?"
 
Brown said:
I visited California in 2000 (I think), when a large earthquake hit an unpopulated desert area within the state. According to news reports, the intensity was comparable to yesterday's Virginia quake, with an epicenter about 150 miles from my location.

I didn't feel a thing. Had it not been for the news reports, I wouldn't have known about it at all.

Maybe California gets magnitude 5.9 quakes more often, but those quakes don't seem to have wide-ranging effect.

During the quake yesterday, I was at least 500 miles from the epicenter, and felt the effect plainly. I called my parents in Iowa right after the quake and (having no way of knowing where the epicenter was) told them that there had been an earthquake in Canada and that we were all right. Knowing my parents, if they heard on the news that there had been an earthquake in Canada, they'd be wondering about my (and my family's) safety. I was actually stunned to learn that the epicenter was in Virginia.

I now understand that one of the interestings thing about this quake was not so much its intensity but the geographical scope of its effects. An event over 500 miles away caused buildings to wobble. It was a remarkable demonstration of how much energy there is even in a "small" earthquake.
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East coast quakes tend to affect a larger area because most of the east coast sits on the same big sheet of bedrock.
 
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