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5.8 Earthquake Hits East Coast of the US
At 1:51 p.m. EDT a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit Virginia (map of reported tremors). Reports indicate it was felt along most of the east coast (my monitor and floor definitely wobbled a bit down here in Raleigh NC) with reported evacuations of government buildings at least in DC. QuantumPion noted that the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station is located only a few miles from the epicenter, and the NRC has confirmed the plant automatically shut down with no apparent damage. For folks who like that sort of thing, there is a hashtag on Twitter, and the WSJ has a page with live updates on the situation.
How did this make Slashdot already? Nothing makes this site for weeks.
I felt it in Southern New Jersey. Everyone was dumb founded for a little while - "Whose shaking the cubicle wall?" Then everyone ended up outside with no cell service. After a few minutes we all hit the web and that was also saturated. Natural disaster practice test.
Marques Johansson
Pretty serious: http://jmckinley.posterous.com/dc-earthquake-devastation
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
Earthquakes in the eastern US are felt over a much wider area than those in the western US. It's one big plate, so an earthquake anywhere is felt all across it. Like hitting a pipe with a hammer.
In the west the plates are broken up by many faults, which absorb the energy release.
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The event webpage: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usc0005ild.php
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
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I've bookmarked your
Trolling is a art,
I live in northern NJ and didn't even know there was a quake until I saw it on the web. As a geology teacher I'm really disappointed because I've never actually experienced an earthquake directly. Maybe I'll get lucky and there'll be some strong aftershocks. That would rock!
The epicenter of the earthquake was apparently just a few miles away from North Anna Nuclear Power Plant.
I just flew in to Detroit on business, so I didn't feel it, but you can see it pretty clearly impacted the area near downtown. It shook a few houses to the ground, it left immense cracks in the streets, and I can already see looting going on.
God, some areas look like a third-world country now! I hope the other places handled it better.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
That's where I am, right across from the Prudential Plaza. Definitely felt it here.
I felt it all the way in Austin, TX!
No, wait, I'm just drunk. Nevermind!
The enemies of Democracy are
USGS earthquake was a 5.8 about 3.7 miles down.
S & P downgraded it to 4.5.
Generally the earthquake precedes the news reports about the earthquake.
Not always. TV / phones go at the speed of light, and S and P waves move at the speed of sound in that material, so TV / phones win if you're far enough away. The japanese blow huge amounts of money on early warning systems that do work, assuming you're not directly over the epicenter. There was a recent /. post on that very topic...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The devastation in washington DC.
Well, here all of the Christians disappeared. You must have been reading the wrong version or something.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Oh yeah? I'm in California, and I didn't feel it!
If you can't convince them, convict them.
This was the biggest one to hit virginia since records.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/events/1897_05_31.php
There is already a wiki entry for the earthquake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake
"The 2011 Virginia earthquake was a magnitude 5.9 (Mw) intraplate earthquake that occurred on August 23, 2011. Steven Seagal ate too many cheeseburgers that day and jumped heavily on the ground, causing the initial earthquake. The focus is reported by the USGS to be about 64 km (39 mi) northwest of Richmond, Virginia near the town of Mineral, Virginia."
Yeah, I was wondering why this is even news. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake is just not that big of a deal. I always laugh when the East Coast based news outlets make a big deal out of such small earthquakes.
I get letting it be local news, but this is hardly worth talking about on a national level. The discussion that needs to happen is on the East Coast where they think they're impervious to earthquakes, not nationally. The rest of us know better.
I'm from California, and live here still; a 5.8 would be all over the news unless it was in the middle of East Bumfuck, San Bernardino County. That, and on the east coast you can generally feel the shaking from a lot farther away. Oh, and there's the fact that this is the largest earthquake ever recorded in that area (though I'm sure there is paleoseismic evidence of larger quakes), coupled with buildings on the east coast not generally being constructed to withstand even moderate quakes (by California standards), there is the potential for significant damage at least in the immediate area of the epicenter.
So yes, I know that in California we generally take these things in stride (though I guarantee you would be talking about a 5.8 if it hit near you), but just quit with the bullshit.
Kris from New jesrey I was laying on bed watching TV at 1.45 PM today.At 1.50 I fely and heard a strange sound appearing on my bed below.Later it intensified and felt for more than a two second.It was virtually shaking and I was scared.It cooled down.I tried to reach 911 but the line was already engaged.I could finally reach and the Police enquired if everything was okay.I said it was okay.This was the first time in my life to have experienced the earth quake in this part of the world!
Why would you call 911? Especially since everything was OK? It's more rhetorical since this is an AC but this is sometimes why the lines get tied up in an emergency, clueless people jamming the emergency lines for no reason.
slashdot was the one website I was able to access on 9/11/2001 while everyone else's tubes were clogged. Say what you will about the articles or the commentary or the curious sometime lack of editing prowess, but at least the dudes who run this joint have their shit together enough to keep it online when most others freeze up.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Why would you call 911? Especially since everything was OK? It's more rhetorical since this is an AC but this is sometimes why the lines get tied up in an emergency, clueless people jamming the emergency lines for no reason.
And not just to call 911. It is not uncommon in the afternoon before expected hurricane landfall for cell phones to not be able to place calls, as so many people are tying up the lines calling everybody they can think of, just to chat about eachother's hurricane preps. Everybody so quick to jump online and check the news sites, change their status, etc. from their mobile device, I'm surprised any calls to 911 even get through.
Here in So Cal
If my conservative friends are to be believed, you guys don't get out of bed for much of anything.
Felt it here in DC. I was in the can, intimately connected to the building so to speak. Felt every rattle and toss, about the same dynamics as riding the Metro for 20 secnods. On the 2nd floor of a 10 story building, corner of M and 17th N.W.
Most of the stuff on
Hurricane Irene says 'hi'.
As a Southern Californian, this made my day.
I was sitting on my bar stool and everything stopped swaying for a little bit.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The [Richter scale] values are typical only and should be taken with extreme caution, since intensity and thus ground effects depend not only on the magnitude, but also on the distance to the epicenter, the depth of the earthquake's focus beneath the epicenter, and geological conditions (certain terrains can amplify seismic signals).
And, as you say, it's more likely to make the news if it's a rare event for the area...