This morning at 2:47 local time (my sweetie made a point of remembering the time), a mild shaking made its way through my dozing, sleep-fogged brain and brought me to full wakefulness. The window was rattling softly and I knew that we were having an earthquake, albeit a very mild one. The shaking soon subsided and I resumed my quest for slumber.
No big deal really, earthquakes happen every day around here — literally. Most go unnoticed, and considering the alternative to lots of little earthquakes is one large one, I’ll take all the mild temblors the shifting plates want to throw at me.
As a bonus, this was my first time using this site to report my experience. (USGS – Science for a changing world!) Reporting only took a moment (Did things move? What did you do?), but then of course I had to poke around the maps checking out all the other recent earthquakes around the world. Big fun!
Well, your old alma mater recorded several quakes in NM last week! Not that they were felt very far afield!
Well, there were no earthquakes here in Massachusetts, nor in Maine – which is where John and I were from Wed. to Sat. However there were some natural phenomena: some great white sharks along the outer Cape Cod shore (as opposed to the bay side) feeding on seals and 2 were tagged by scientists. The tags will pop off on January 10th. In Maine we did see an injured moose at the state’s wild game park. Other wild beasts were the tourists going to LLBean in Freeport on Saturday. Instead of shopping, John and I chose to do a 2-mile hike along the coast at Wolf’s Neck State Park. We also hiked on Thursday at Bradbury Mountain State Park (it’s really a hill). Ok, I know this is rambling, but it is sufficiently muddled?
The song that comes to my mind is “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” although apparently you experienced only the first two and not the rolling. At least an earthquake is a better application for that song than the time when an Albuquerque car dealer used it in a television commercial promoting a sale on used cars.
I bet they did some rolling when they were trying to get back to sleep.
What? Are you living in Hollister now? I mean, earthquakes every day?
This is the west. Hollister is ‘around here’. In fact, this very earthquake had an epicenter very close to Hollister.
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/
sweet!