Earthquake

[pecunium]

Even as I type we enjoyed a long, slow roller of a quake.

No bouncing (and a good thing, as the snake racks have yet to be bolted to the wall), just a decided sense of up and down... like a huge waterbed.

And it was long... perhaps as much as 15 seconds... with a very slow tailing off... the nausea holding sway of an moribund ship on an oily swell... just barely above the threshold of kinesthetic perception.

Now to see the news, and find out where it was (and how deep) how strong, and what damage. The bookshelf excursion may have to wait.

Comments

[zoje-george.livejournal.com]

Oof. Hang on tight!

Looks like we might be getting some seismic excitment soon ourselves.

Parkfield

[ammitbeast.livejournal.com]

I felt that, too, here in the SF Bay Area. Looks like there was one 5.9 near Parkfield, California, plus some smaller ones right after.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

We even felt it up in the Bay Area. Parkfield.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Long, slow, and majestic generally means biggish, and farther away. Short, sharp shock means right under you, size depending on how hard the short sharp shock is. Weird to have you and Lucy Huntzinger and Elise all posting about earthquakes in such a short time, given your various geographical distributions.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yes, well it was noxious (seasick making, and with that disturbed electrical feeling in my medulla oblongata for hours... still semi-resident).

Called a friend (geologist at UCSB) and we talked about it for awhile. Seems the USGS had 1,500 reports in the first twenty minutes.

6.0 (when I talked to him) in Parkfield (the densest collection of seismographs and suchlike in the US), with a 5.4 10 minutes behind. No apparent motion (to people) directly above, which implies a thrust on what ought to be a strike/slip.

The funny thing is the apparent motion (to both myself and Maia) was in the opposite direction of it's actual travel. It was felt as far south as Santa Anna, and North to San Mateo

Much less bothersome, and damaging, than the one last Dec. This had a few people talking about it (e.g. when I was picking up the 8x12s of the apple cart from the abandoned orchard in Nisqually) but not the overturned anthill and broken glasses (the perfumery reeked) of that one.

TK

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

It will be interesting to see just what comes of the quake. They've been expecting one there for a long time, and the whole place is wired to observe quakes. Maybe they'll actually learn something new...