Magnitude 5.8 - VIRGINIA

maquiladora

A rare US east coast magnitude 5.8 in Virginia. 6km depth.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/at00lqe6x3.php

Felt in Washingtion DC, New York, Ohio etc.

Frynge

Now 6.0 felt as far away as martha's vineyard

Gandhi

Sure felt it here in Philly.

maquiladora

Strongest earthquakes recorded in Virginia since 1897 it seems.

Any reports of damage? 6km isnt very deep shallow.

Frynge

seems to be damage/disruption to cell phone towers and satelite communication

Pangea

Earthquake just hit New York/New Jersey!
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/08/earthquake_rocks_new_jersey_an.html

Frynge

Pangea wrote: »

Earthquake just hit New York/New Jersey!
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/08/earthquake_rocks_new_jersey_an.html

was it a different quake or an after shock of the virginina one.

now revised to 5.9

no reports of damage so far.

Pangea

Frynge wrote: »

was it a different quake or an after shock of the virginina one.

now revised to 5.9

no reports of damage so far.

Not sure, it just happened 20 mins ago.

maquiladora

Upgraded to 5.9, strongest earthquake ever recorded in Virginia.

snubbleste

Has FoxNews outlined which terrorist organisation is responsible? :cool:

maquiladora

Local ABC news coverage http://www.wjla.com/live/

Gandhi

snubbleste wrote: »

Has FoxNews outlined which terrorist organisation is responsible? :cool:

The Onion tweeted that a 500 ft Bin Laden was what we were feeling. They were pretty quick off the mark with it.

muff03

Girlfriend just text from Yonkers a few minutes ago after an aftershock

DjFlin

It's actually just the Dollar collapsing...

philstar

are earthquakes weather related?

sunbabe08

well we have volcano threads in here, might as well have earthquakes too.


i have a brother in harrisonburg Virginia. trying to contact him:rolleyes:

maquiladora

philstar wrote: »

are earthquakes weather related?

No.

But this earthquake has happened less than a day after a 5.3 in Colorado.

Largest earthquake in Colorado for over a century then hours later the largest earthquake ever recorded in Virginia. I guess there could be some connection there.

Gandhi

I always thought earthquakes were considered weather. Is weather atmospheric only?

Anyway, cool graph showing travel times of the earthquake:

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_c0005ild_t.html

gbee

Gandhi wrote: »

I always thought earthquakes were considered weather. Is weather atmospheric only?]

Volcanoes effect the weather, to a lesser extent earthquakes can too, they might cause a tsunami and flooding.

I've no problems in having them in the weather forum ~

dsmythy

People less likely to pop into an "Earth sciences" forum than weather. Geography forum is a graveyard. Earthquake news here makes sense

munchkin_utd

philstar wrote: »

are earthquakes weather related?

And there's no mention on rte or anything of an earthquake in cavan, let alone such a massive one?

What's going on? :rolleyes:

Tabnabs

Here's a photo of the devastation

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-23-photos-of-devastation-from-the-east-coast-earthquake

sunbabe08

my brother's fine. did not give any details. hello, thats one of the reason i was looking for him, he's only a hour away from where the earthquake originated. the other was see if he was ok.

philstar

philstar wrote: »

are earthquakes weather related?

wow, what an original question

FFS:rolleyes:

sunbabe08

sunbabe08 wrote: »

my brother's fine. did not give any details. hello, thats one of the reason i was looking for him, he's only a hour away from where the earthquake originated. the other was see if he was ok.

Delighted for you that your brother is ok. Your nerves must have been shattered when you heard the initial report.

gbee

I did not see the turned over chair earlier ~ hope i'm not premature, but it seem like a storm in a teacup.

Solair

Seems to be quite a lot of earthquakes recently in general.
I wonder are we due for our once in 500 year mild shaking. It would certainly take care of the ghost estate problem!

up for anything

From BT:

CHUCK BANKS on August 23, 2011, 7:07 PM
I work in an 8-story building 45 miles from the epicenter of the VA quake. I was standing next to my desk talking to two guys. It started quite gentle for about 10 seconds. We looked around thinking someone was running past the desk. Suddenly, it got violent, shaking so hard that items on my desk bounced around, and the lights and cubicle walls swayed. The building made terrible cracking and poping sounds. One guy yelled “Under the desks!”, and we all followed within a second. The hard shaking lasted about 10-15 seconds, then it gradually eased off for maybe another 10-15 seconds. Everything was swaying so much that it’s hard to say exactly when the quake ended. Everything in the building seemed perfectly normal when it was over. However, all 7,000 of us decided that evacuation was a good idea after the sounds we heard and the possibility of aftershocks. Security inspected the parking garage, and we were released for the day. We all got out of the parking garage ASAP and went home.

Cell phone lines were jammed for the next hour, but texting worked fine. That’s something everyone should remember in major events. A text only needs a fraction of a second of contact to get through, and your phone will try until it succeeds.

There is minor, but widespread damage. The National Cathedral in DC had three of the four pinacles at the top of the spires fall off. There are pieces of them all over the roof and ground. They are stone, and several feet high.

I just got a call that we are to return to work tomorrow, so I guess the building inspection was okay. I lived in CA for four years, and this was much stronger than anything I felt there.

A lot of people are saying that is was much stronger than anything experienced on the West coast. Also there seems to be lots of finger crossing that it is the main earthquake and not a foreshock.

Solair

up for anything wrote: »

From BT:



A lot of people are saying that is was much stronger than anything experienced on the West coast. Also there seems to be lots of finger crossing that it is the main earthquake and not a foreshock.

Could that be because most West Coast structures are relatively earthquake proof?
East Coast buildings are far more like ours, they'd make a hell of a noise and probably crack of even slightly shaken. The pavements / sidewalks and roads would also probably transmit shockwaves too. West Coast pavements have to cope with regular tremors.

I suspect the phone networks just overloaded as everyone suddenly rang everyone else. Cell sites can only host so many calls simultaneously.
It didn't seem to be physical damage as it came back online very quickly afterwards.
We've all experienced this on New Years eve.

up for anything

Solair wrote: »

Could that be because most West Coast structures are relatively earthquake proof?
East Coast buildings are far more like ours, they'd make a hell of a noise and probably crack of even slightly shaken. The pavements / sidewalks and roads would also probably transmit shockwaves too. West Coast pavements have to cope with regular tremors.

I suspect the phone networks just overloaded as everyone suddenly rang everyone else. Cell sites can only host so many calls simultaneously.
It didn't seem to be physical damage as it came back online very quickly afterwards.
We've all experienced this on New Years eve.

I came across a load of links yesterday explaining this but can't seem to find any now. I'll post some later when I track them down. It is due to the different geology of the West and East coasts and where they situated on plates and plate boundaries as far as I can remember.

Edited.

Found one.

http://www.geol.vt.edu/outreach/vtso/cvsz.html

EARTHQUAKES IN THE CENTRAL VIRGINIA SEISMIC ZONE
Since at least 1774, people in central Virginia have felt small earthquakes and suffered damage from infrequent larger ones. The largest damaging earthquake (magnitude 4.8) in the seismic zone occurred in 1875. Smaller earthquakes that cause little or no damage are felt each year or two.

Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).

FAULTS
Earthquakes everywhere occur on faults within bedrock, usually miles deep. Most bedrock beneath central Virginia was assembled as continents collided to form a supercontinent about 500-300 million years ago, raising the Appalachian Mountains. Most of the rest of the bedrock formed when the supercontinent rifted apart about 200 million years ago to form what are now the northeastern U.S., the Atlantic Ocean, and Europe.

At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, often scientists can determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. The Central Virginia seismic zone is far from the nearest plate boundaries, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea. The seismic zone is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few, if any, earthquakes in the seismic zone can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake. As in most other areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards in the seismic zone is the earthquakes themselves.

Source: NEIC/USGS


VTSO Home Page

lucernarian

Jeez I haven't been on this forum in a while and what do I read but of earthquakes in south Cavan:eek:

4.8 in California earlier, with lots of after shocks.

EQ-20110827-208729-US
Magnitude: 4.8
Mercalli scale: 5
Date-Time [UTC]: 27 August, 2011 at 07:18:21 UTC
Local Date/Time: Saturday, August 27, 2011 at 07:18 in the moorning at epicenter
Location: 36� 35.052, 121� 10.848
Depth: 7.60 km (4.72 miles)
Region: North America

they have brought it down to 4.6. heres a list of the aftershocks from USGS

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/quakes_all.php