Isle Royale Forums

4.3 Earthquake in NE IL
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ ... hp#details

John,
Was that along the New Madrid fault?
I'm from Evansville, IN originally and I always heard that the New Madrid fault ran along the western edge of Illinois and the eastern edge of Missouri... I guess along the river... I felt a couple of earthquakes from it. Once when I was in the lab and noticed the liquid in all the bottles on the shelves started quivering. That was eerie.

Actually last New Year's Eve there was a tremor here in Lancaster, PA, which I guess is highly unusual. That one I didn't feel, but I heard it. It sounded like a terrific boom of thunder. I never knew they made noise, but I certainly heard that one. I got online to see what had exploded and found out it was a small earthquake.

Today we are having a real blizzard with high winds. I love snow and always envy the winters in the North Country. But this year I can just relax and look out my window and have it come to me. Although I admit the high winds give me pause for all the people who have to be out in it.

Of course, even the beautiful snow wears out its welcome when next week rolls around and we still won't be able to find enough parking spaces anywhere we go due to the glaciers that appear in parking lots.

I was just talking to niners,who lives close to me about this. The epicenter of the quake is within 10 miles of where he lives. It is not on the New Madrid Fault, in fact where it happened, there had not been a previous known fault. It is interesting to note the reports of the strongest tremors were away from the epicenter. The weird thing is there was a large boom heard with the tremors (which shook our house). I have been reading up on earthquakes as I don't know much of the physics associated with them. It will be interesting to see more info and or theories about the noise ect.

John, hopefully you didn't have any damage to your house from the shaking. I'm sure all the scientific minds will be studying this one in-depth, especially since they didn't realize there was a fault in that location.

I've never felt an earthquake tremor before. I don't necessarily want to go looking for an earthquake but, it would be an interesting thing to experience. I must say, I'm a bit of an adrenaline junky, although I don't get to exercise that part of my personality at all. I would actually like to skydive at some point in my life and it would also be cool to travel with those storm chasers in search of close-up encounters with severe electrical storms and tornadoes.

Hey Brian,
It was an interesting experience. I would not classify myself as an adreneline junky per se. I called my friend niners early this AM. He posts here. We have been friends for a long time and as such have been though a lot including tornadoes, (we are both NWS Weather Spotters), large prescribed burns (400 acres in some cases), storms on the Great Lakes and other "events". He has quite a few jumps (parachuting)under his belt.
As it happened, I was scared as I did not know what was happening. We live near an airport and had a plane go down a few weeks ago. The house was shaking and there was a loud "BOOM". I have always had the oppurtunity to preapre for storms ect. There was not time for preparation this time. One minute I was listening to my radio, the next there was noise and the house was shaking. It lasted about 10 seconds.
It was about 4:15 AM when I called. I tried 911 but it was jammed up. I wanted confirmation on what I suspected was an earthquake. He answered the phone something like this " What the hell was that?" We compared notes on what happened and came up with the same thought, an earthquake. We talked for a while, I was on the computer trying to find out more info. We agreed we would do independant info searches and talk later. I went on the USGS site and the earthquake was confrimed, the epicenter being relatively close to my house. I went outside imeediately after. I did not see anyone in the neighborhood outside nor lights in houses on. We did a quick check of the house for damage (none thankfully) and continued to search out info. After a half hour with no more tremors ect, I felt ok.

Having gone through it, I am thankfull it was not worse than it was. I also think there is a part of me that can scratch earthquake off the "list"!

Well, glad to hear that you, your family and home are doing o.k. I'm sure that was a frightening experience especially since you had a loud noise/boom to go along with it and the fact that you live close to an airport.

NWS storm spotter sounds like fun too. I have a portable scanner and used to listen to the weather spotters for information when big storms rolled through my area. Always thought that would be fun too.

Backpacker534 wrote:NWS storm spotter sounds like fun too. I have a portable scanner and used to listen to the weather spotters for information when big storms rolled through my area. Always thought that would be fun too.

If you go on your local NOAA/NWS site, they should list Spotter classes for the Spring. It is also a good place to meet up with other Spotters.