C-Forum

I just felt an earthquake rumble here at our house here in Richmond about 15-20 min. ago (around 4:00 p.m.). The news is reporting the shaking was felt pretty widespread (Washington, D.C. down to central North Carolina, west towards Roanoke and east past Williamsburg.

I was (and pretty am) freaked by the experience. At first, I thought the shaking was from the cats chasing each other, then it must have been a big truck, then a VERY big truck, to wondering just what the he!! all that banging was about ! I went running to the front of our house and saw our picture window shaking and vibrating wildly, our cats wondering what was going on and the squirrels all running around our yard in a panic! That banging was pretty freaky!

Who else felt the shaking?

KNeal

The news just reported that 2 seismlologic centers recorded a 3.75-4.0 earthquake about 25 miles west of Richmond, Virginia (near Scottsville along the James river).

I just heard at 5:00 that the "official" reading was 4.5 on the Richter Scale. Pretty significant to me, but I'm sure there are plenty of people around this area that felt worse.

4.5? That's just a little tickle.....although it does depend on how deeply and how far away from you it's centered.

Where I went to undergrad in NZ there were small earthquakes all the time (most of them you barely noticed). New Zealand gets hit by a major quake every 50-100 years.

The worst I felt was one where I was in the library studying. Things started shaking, which was no big deal to me sitting at a desk by the wall, but then I looked around and saw the stacks/shelves swaying back and forth quite significantly and a few very whitefaced people removing themselves from in amongst them. I suddenly understood why there were metal rails linking the different sets of shelves together at the very top.



NZMatt



Interesting facts about NZ: Our capital city is built on a major active fault line. Our biggest city (Auckland) is built in an area rife with volcanic activity (around 50 old volcanic craters/hills scattered around the city), with the most recent one in the middle of the harbour and listed as "Dormant" rather than "extinct" - it last erupted a few hundred years ago. There's meant to be a major eruption in the area sometime in the next couple of hundred years I believe. Didn't the English choose great places to build the cities in their colonies (the other interesting one here is Dunedin - which has what is known as the steepest street in the world - one section is so steep that it has stairs instead of a road - because the city was designed in England without taking into account the terrain and just plonked down on the map in New Zealand as laid out in the old country.) Sorry....enough reminiscing.

Logging on I was sitting here & could feel this little vibration. At first it seemed like the hard drive spinning, except it was the china closet next to me. It was like I could feel this very slight vibration of the floor & house frame for a few seconds.

Later I saw on the Wash Post webpage that it happened at 3:59. Just checked and according to my syslog, that's exactly when I logged in!

It was pretty faint, if I hadnt been sitting here in a very quite place I would not have noticed it.

I'm near Loch Raven Dam, which is a popular ref point for planes & choppers; sometimes I get vibrations that are only noticeable if you are by yourself & nothing else happening. But there was nothing like that going on at that time..

4.5, is that big enough to move rocks? If so, I wonder how that little creek next to the quake looks now

I didn't feel anything here & the dogs didn't do anything strange.

Here's a link to the info:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/ ... uscdbf.htm

Mike W.

Isn't it spectacular New Zealand scenery that we see in the Lord of the Rings movies?

I remember once when my employer at the time had a project in NZ and I asked about my chances of going. They laughed and said there was a looong line ahead of me....

Yep - most of Lord of the Rings was filmed in NZ. It was also an NZ company (Weta Designs) responsible for most of the digital effects and the scriptwriter (can't remember her name) and Director (Peter Jackson) are also kiwis.

Can't wait to see the third and get another good dose of home.