So that’s what that was (UPDATE)
Having never visited California before, I’ve never had the chance to feel an earthquake, not that I got a good feel for it since I was dead asleep when it rolled though Charleston. At first, I thought it was either really bad weather right over our house or we needed to have the Pope swing on by for an exorcism the way the bed was moving. But as the windows rattled away and the dogs ran around, it became clear that it was an earthquake.
The craziest part of this whole thing was the response by the early morning news. After grabbing my phone and checking the radar, reporting the earthquake to the USGS and rechecking the USGS earthquake map to verify that there indeed was an earthquake, we turned on the TV only to find the news fumbling around saying they don’t know if it was an earthquake or not – for 30 minutes after I had found out on my own. Nice response time on that one.
Anyways, for detailed info on the quake, you can check out the USGS web site. CNN has some pretty good coverage of the effects and the multi-state area that felt the quake.
UPDATE:
So there was just another quake, just smaller this time, about 5 minutes ago. Could this be a sign of things to come? There have actually been a rash of smaller quakes since the “big one” earlier this morning.