Virginia Earthquake of 2011, Aug 23

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The Virginia earthquake on August 23, 2011, registered a magnitude of 5.8, making it the strongest in the region since 1897. The quake was felt across a wide area, including cities as far as Boston and Philadelphia, with reports of shaking lasting around 15 seconds. Initial reports varied in magnitude, fluctuating between 5.8 and 5.9, but were later confirmed back to 5.8. While there were no significant damages reported, some areas experienced shattered windows and disruptions in cell service. This event highlighted the rarity of earthquakes in the Appalachian region, which is not typically known for seismic activity.
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5.8 in Virginia

http://www.google.com/search?client...rceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest

According to Wikipedia, this is the strongest earthquake since a similarly sized one in 1897.


http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usc0005ild.php#details . (Courtesy of Astronuc)

(note: official reports of the strength have varied, started at 5.8, went up to 5.9, and I think reports are back down to 5.8)
 
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Felt it in Boston...
 


A bit of surprise, since the Appalachian chain is not terribly active.

Maine has a few small ones here and there, and the most recent "swarm" has been attributed to tectonic rebound from deformation by the Laurentide ice sheet that scoured our landscape during the last ice age.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll be watching the news tonight to get updates.
 


I was relatively close to last years 3.6 quake -- I'm not entirely sure how this one compared in my area. I think a little less violent, but more prolonged. (and I didn't discover google's "recent earthquakes" display at that time) (also, I'm half asleep for today's)
 


Not unexpectedly, USGS sites are jammed.
 


Felt it outside of Philly - my first. Didn't realize what it was at first.

Http://www.usgs.gov

Felt like 15 sec of 1 inch, side to side oscillations at around 80hz
 


Felt it in my office in NJ! Had to evacuate. (Now I've got to check the lab. Don't think it did any damage.)
 
Wow! People felt it that far away! I wouldn't have noticed a small one, even if it could be felt here. Heavy trucks rumbling down this back road cause enough light shaking that a small quake would go unnoticed.
 
I felt in Ontario. It was so weak that I couldn't tell if my bed is really moving back and forth or I am just feeling it.
 
  • #10


russ_watters said:
Felt it outside of Philly - my first. Didn't realize what it was at first.

Http://www.usgs.gov

Felt like 15 sec of 1 inch, side to side oscillations at around 80hz

Yeah my first as well. I actually thought I was getting sick because I felt dizzy for apparently no reason. Then I realized my desk was slightly shaking.
 
  • #11
Felt in the Jersey suburbs of Phila. I lived in Japan, so I'm used to it. This is not the first one that I felt in NJ, there was one around 1971.
 
  • #12
Apparently folks in the Hudson Valley felt it. I did hear a kind of a muffled boom (P-wave probably), but no lateral motion.

This is the event - http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usc0005ild.php

5.9 mag, near surface (< 1 mile), but poorly constrained.
 
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  • #13
Yea felt it in NYC as well. Didn't realize what happened until I saw the aquarium water sloshing around.
 
  • #14
Astronuc said:
Apparently folks in the Hudson Valley felt it. I did hear a kind of a muffled boom (P-wave probably), but no lateral motion.

This is the event - http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usc0005ild.php

5.9 mag, near surface (< 1 mile), but poorly constrained.
I wouldn't have noticed a "boom" either, since we are under the flight-path for military aircraft headed for Europe and the ME. When there are large troop-movements and/or lots of equipment being deployed in a hurry, there is a lot of rumbling overhead. Commercial aircraft are pretty quiet - military aircraft? Not so much.

When I was a kid, sonic booms were quite commonplace here. SAC had lots of fighters to escort their jet bombers, and their old re-built tankers (generally B-28s) and when those fighters had tanked up, they'd often put on a show for us kids getting back to escorting the bombers. Boom! Life anywhere near the old Dow AFB meant that your skies were constantly streaked with contrails.
 
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  • #15
Astronuc said:
Apparently folks in the Hudson Valley felt it. I did hear a kind of a muffled boom (P-wave probably), but no lateral motion.

This is the event - http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usc0005ild.php

5.9 mag, near surface (< 1 mile), but poorly constrained.

That link puts the depth at 1 km, +/- 7.4 km...:biggrin:
 
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  • #16
Didn't feel anything here in upstate South Carolina. I was in lab with students sitting quietly taking a quiz. Someone would have spoken up if they had felt something.

I see a report on cnn.com that someone in Raleigh NC felt a "small tremor." It must have petered out before it got here.
 
  • #17
We felt it hard here in Southern Virginia. I had a split second of vertigo before I felt the shaking.

Preliminary reports are there is no damage here at NASA - still waiting to hear from JLab.

News says there were shattered windows at UVA.

Only issues I have heard about are friends in Northern Virginia having issues with cell service.
 
  • #18
Odd, the USGS has another report apparently for the same quake, but with different data

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.html
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0005ild/
 
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  • #19
Hurkyl said:
Odd, the USGS has another report apparently for the same quake, but with different data

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.html
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0005ild/
It seems the discrepancy is the source reporting the event.

For the geeks that just have to know the history of earthquakes in Virginia.

http://www.virginiaplaces.org/geology/quake.html

The last "big one" in Virginia (about a 5.8 on the Richter scale) was on May 31, 1897, in Pearisburg, the county seat of Giles County. The judge in the courthouse adjourned a trial, jumped over the railing, and fled outside with everyone else as the courthouse rattled, brick walls cracked, and chimneys fell over. It was Virginia's most powerful recorded earthquake - but our recorded memory extend back only a few centuries, and the geologic history of the state extends back hundreds of millions of years. In 1959, Giles County was shaken again by a 3.8 temblor. More recently, windows were broken in a Veterans Day, 1975 earthquake in Blacksburg.
 
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  • #20
Not meaning to hijack from Virginia but there was a http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/us/24earthquake.html" last night.
 
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  • #21
Hurkyl said:
Odd, the USGS has another report apparently for the same quake, but with different data

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.html
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0005ild/

First link: se082311a.html
Source Southeast U.S. Seismic Network
Event ID se082311a

Second link: usc0005ild
Source Magnitude: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Location: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

They have to reconcile the two sets of data/recordings.
 
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  • #24
Why do I feel rickrolled?
 
  • #26
lisab said:
:smile:

How tragic!

:confused: You think the person could have handed it to someone who could have enjoyed an it while they ran for the hills... alone... :smile: :smile:
 
  • #30
Evo said:
Holy Moly!@!

That's going to cost upwards of a million dollars to repair that.

Definitely going to have to figure out how to re-engineer that whole structure.
 
  • #31
No damage here. My house has always looked like this.
 
  • #32
Locally, the quake was reported in southern and far-western Maine. They must be far more delicate persons that I am. Kind of like the "Princess and the Pea" sensitivity.
 
  • #33
About 20+ years back, we had a young couple over for drinks and a few games of cards. The various bottles of olive oil, peanut oil, etc started clanging together, and the young woman told her boyfriend "stop jiggling your legs" (he has a lot of nervous energy and doesn't sit for long without fidgeting). He said "I'm not doing anything" and sure enough, the whole house was pulsating. Our property was located on a very large deposit of alluvial sand, and I was quite surprised that we could feel a small quake so strongly.
 
  • #34
It stirred some interest in the Fukushima thread - apparently North Anna NPP lost offsite power.
 
  • #35
It was a short while before learned about the quake, but around the same time within a few minutes, I noticed some slight vibration in SW MI.
 
  • #36
Holy crap. I couldn't wait to post. I was in class on the 4th (top floor) of the building when it happened. Ok so class was about to end when the floor started slightly vibrating like a big bus was outside or something fell on the floor below us. Then a second later, it got sort of violent and the entire builnding was really swaying back and forth pretty good, you could feel the building move. Everyone in my classroom was quiet and looking at each other when I said "Yo, is that an Earthquake!?". I looked outside to see the lightpoles swaying as well. Then we evacuated and went home.

Freaking AWESOME! I've always wanted to feel one and I finally have. Ok Hurricanes: Check. Earthquake: check. Up next is a tornado.
 
  • #37
CosmicEye said:
Freaking AWESOME! I've always wanted to feel one and I finally have. Ok Hurricanes: Check. Earthquake: check. Up next is a tornado.

I've never had any of those. How come everyone else gets to suffer through catastrophes and I don't? My life sucks!
 
  • #38
I was working out when it happened and I really wanted to believe it was my chest coming out >.>
 
  • #39
Well there's a decent Hurricane coming up the east coast. Where do you live to have no natural disaster?

I also forgot Blizzard on that list: check
 
  • #40
CosmicEye said:
Well there's a decent Hurricane coming up the east coast. Where do you live to have no natural disaster?

I also forgot Blizzard on that list: check

Oh - don't forget volcanoes!
 
  • #41
lisab said:
Oh - don't forget volcanoes!

Aw, heck, you build one of those. Just bury 2000 lbs of iron fillings and 2000 lbs of sulfur a few feet underground in the town square one night and the town will suddenly be full of news crews from CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC, and Al Jazeera.

http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/VicN2/vicN2.html

On the other hand, that's one of those things that might not be such a smart thing to do post 9/11.
 
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  • #43
edward said:
Tectonic plates on the east coast are one solid plate. The west coast has multiple fault lines.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/ear...?tab=9482930&section=1206853&playlist=1363340
The media really likes to sensationalize this stuff.

Code: 
          UTC DATE-TIME       LAT      LON     DEPTH    Location
Mag       y/m/d     h:m:s     deg      deg       km  
5.8   2011/08/23 17:51:04    37.936  -77.933    6.0    8 km ( 5 mi) SSW of Mineral, VA   
2.8   2011/08/23 18:46:50    37.931  -77.935    0.1    9 km ( 5 mi) SSW of Mineral, VA   
2.2   2011/08/23 19:20:26    37.911  -78.004    0.1   13 km ( 8 mi) S of Louisa, VA   

4.2   2011/08/24 00:04:36    37.912  -77.951    7.9   11 km ( 7 mi) SSW of Mineral, VA 
3.4   2011/08/24 04:45:26    37.925  -77.994    4.9   11 km ( 7 mi) S of Louisa, VA

17:51:04 UTC = 01:51 PM EDT

There were a couple more vibrations.
 
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  • #44
imagesizer?file=helenaspopkin277AE443-1089-F2FC-2D0F-05BBC83AAAE0.jpg
 
  • #45
lisab said:
imagesizer?file=helenaspopkin277AE443-1089-F2FC-2D0F-05BBC83AAAE0.jpg
Rofl, the headline makes it even funnier.
 
  • #46
That's hilarious.

I hope no one was in that lawn chair when it tipped.
 
  • #47
Newai said:
That's hilarious.

I hope no one was in that lawn chair when it tipped.
Oh, the humanity!
 
  • #48
I felt the one that happened here in Colorado last night around this time (11:46:19 MST, to be precise). Just a little shaking, lasted less than 10 seconds. Near the border with New Mexico.

First quake I ever felt here in Colorado!

I wonder if what let loose on the East Coast could have triggered the one over here?
 
  • #49
Looting begins in N.Y. as Wall Street reopens.

D.C. built on swamp, promises to rebuild if it sinks.

Film at 11:00.
 
  • #50
There was an earthquake in Oakland tonight. How come we don't get a thread for it?? Oh yea, we get em all the time >_>
 

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