Just A Little Shaking

Woke up this morning to an earthquake. It was about 4:30am and I woke up to shut the tv off that I had left on. After finally finding the remote I had just rolled over and the whole house shook. At first I thought it was a thunderstorm. It sounded like rolling thunder. But then it kept getting stronger and the pictures on the wall started shaking. It lasted about 15-20 seconds. Then there was a small aftershock and that was it. I fell right back asleep. When I got up at 6am I watched the news and confirmed what I pretty much figured had happened, there was an earthquake.

Last quake I remember was when I was in junior high. We might have had some small rumbles since then but an actual quake that made the news was in '91 or '92. Most people don't realize it but Southern Illinois sits on one the largest fault lines in America- New Madrid Fault. California gets all the fame for having seismic activity but Southern Illinois and Southeast Missouri are right smack dab in the middle of dangerous territory.


Though I didn't think this one was all that big it appears it was felt far and wide. Here' s the NY Times:

For a quake that has not so far yielded any reports of injury or significant damage, it sure was felt far and wide: The Associated Press says it was felt as far away as Milwaukee and Cincinnati, and that skyscrapers in Chicago and Indianapolis were set to shimmying (that’s good news, compared to cracking and crumbling). An early morning radio host all the way over in Des Moines reported feeling her desk chair roll and shake beneath her. Even Grand Rapids, Mich., noticed the rumble.

The USGS describes the region as:

This large region borders the much more seismically active New Madrid seismic zone on the seismic zone's north and west. The Illinois basin - Ozark dome region covers parts of Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas and stretches from Indianapolis and St. Louis to Memphis. Moderately frequent earthquakes occur at irregular intervals throughout the region. The largest historical earthquake in the region (magnitude 5.4) damaged southern Illinois in 1968. Moderately damaging earthquakes strike somewhere in the region each decade or two, and smaller earthquakes are felt about once or twice a year. In addition, geologists have found evidence of eight or more prehistoric earthquakes over the last 25,000 years that were much larger than any observed historically in the region.

And now as I'm typing this...another quake just hit. More later...wow it's 10:16am

*Update:

Things have stopped shaking again. Not sure what the strength of this latest one was but it didn't last as long and seemed to be a little weaker than the first one.

**Update:

Initial reports are the aftershock felt while typing this post was a 4.5 earthquake. Much weaker than the 5.2 felt very early this morning.

***Update:

Nice ABC News article about seismic activity in Southern Illinois.

Tags: Earthquake