Virginia Quake Felt Here In CT!

If you felt the ground shake today it was the result of an earthquake all the way from Virginia, 380 miles away!

I came into work today blissfully unaware of the earthquake. I walked out of the elevator to a flurry of activity. Shouting, running, news cut-ins…what was happening?
I caught up quickly. I had to! Luckily Geoff Fox was at work already and he briefed me on everything so I could start making graphics for the news at 4. Between the earthquake, Irene and the local forecast, I was cramming!

Now I’m calmer. Here are the details on the quake:

Magnitude: 5.8
Time: 1:51 PM
Depth: 3.7 miles
Location: 5 miles from Mineral, VA
(The location of the quake is a known area of seismic activity)

Aftershocks are likely. The earth takes a while to get back into equilibrium after an earthquake. But aftershocks are usually smaller and will likely be too small for us to feel.

This is a shake map. The USGS asks people who feel an earthquake to report it and rate the shaking on a scale of 1-10. People from Georgia up to Massachusetts felt the quake! WHY? The east coast has a harder crust than the west coast so the same amount of shaking can be felt across a larger area.

Here’s a fun fact! The earthquake scale is logarithmic. What does that mean? Well each point on the scale is 10 times the amplitude as the number before it. That means a magnitude 6.0 is ten times stronger than a 5.0. And a 7.0 is 100 times stronger than a 5.0.