Yesterday, my feet had barely touched the ground when that ground started moving. I had just gotten back from spending ten days in Alaska, revisiting old haunts and old friends in the most seismically-active state in the union; while there, I didn't feel the slightest tremor, but almost as soon as I returned to the nation's capital, the earth shook.
Yesterday, my feet had barely touched the ground when that ground started moving. I had just gotten back from spending ten days in Alaska, revisiting old haunts and old friends in the most seismically-active state in the union; while there, I didn't feel the slightest tremor, but almost as soon as I returned to the nation's capital, the earth shook.
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I believe that counts as irony.
I, along with just about everyone else in the metropolitan Washington region, posted an account on Twitter; predictably, it didn't take long for Californian friends to mock the reaction to what, in the grand scheme of things, was a fairly middling temblor. But for any of my fellow east coast denizens who, 24 hours later, may be feeling slightly embarrassed by west coasters' assertions that "they wouldn't even get out of bed" for a 5.8 quake, let me assure you: they're exaggerating. The Virginia earthquake may not have been an especially grand one - as has been widely reported, California has experienced 35 quakes of a comparable size in the last half-century or so, and Japan has endured 90 aftershocks of magnitude 6.0 or greater since the catastrophic event of March 11 - but Tuesday's rumble would have been enough to at least catch the attention of even the most hardened earthquake veteran.
I know, because I am one.
During the seven years I lived in Alaska, I came to regard my friends in the Golden State as complete wusses when it came to earthquakes. (Of course, few things please Alaskans more than mocking residents of the Lower 48 - or, as Alaskans call it, "Outside". Everything's bigger in Texas? Not when compared to Alaska it isn't. Texas is so small that if Alaska were cut in half, each segment would still be bigger than that small patch of real estate on the Mexican border. But I digress.) I rolled my eyes whenever a friend in Los Angeles told me about a four point something - or even, I admit now, a five point something. I remember being incredulous when, during a visit to LA, the building I was in was evacuated after what seemed like a decidedly minor quake.
Seeing some of the reactions to our event yesterday, I realize that I was not so much an earthquake snob as an earthquake bore. It's true that you adapt quickly when living in an earthquake zone: as a rough rule of thumb, I found that something in the region of a 4.0 would generally be enough to wake me up in the night, but not to get out of bed. I remember, on more than one occasion, opening my eyes, waiting to see how bad the shaking would get, and then closing them again once the rumbling stopped.
But of course not all earthquakes are the same, and the magnitude tells only part of the story.
Article continues: http://news.discovery.com/earth/a-tale-of-two-earthquakes-110824.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
