Ok, this is probably old school for anyone living in California but I woke up to an Earth Quake here in St. Louis this morning! The bed was shaking so hard I thought someone was getting in my bed and it woke me up. I live alone!! I've felt slight tremers here in St. Louis before but this really shook the house for a good Minute at least!

http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/cus/STORE/X851141_08/ciim_display.html

Welcome to the New Madrid/Madras and Wabash faults.  There was a series of earthquakes along the former in 1811-1812 which didn't affect too many people since the area was sparsely populated then.

WOW I live in Willow Springs its a good 200-250 miles South west of you I did`nt notice a thing.

Well it was actually centered in Illinois so it wasn't the New Madrid fault this time. That's down around the bootheel portion of Missouri. This one was close to the Illinois/Indianna border. We had after shocks around 10:15am that lasted even longer.

I was trying to discover a place on this planet that would be save from earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricane, volcano eruptions and -100 degrees average temperatures.  Yeah that  New Madrid/Madras is a problem for us down south adding to the tornadoes and hurricanes.

However the end of all of these would mean one thing a dead planet and us along with it.  Jan

St. Louis gets some odd weather and, now and then, a little shaking up from tremors. My son woke me at 4:40am motioning for me to put my hearing aud in. Then he and my daughter told me we just had a quake. My daughter tried calling 911 to find out for sure and our phone lines were down for about 5 minutes. Then they said they were only taking emergency call because of the quake. Finally told on the news it was 5.4 on the scale. My daughter and her hubby were in the upstairs rooms when it started shaking. Then she was down here at 10: something this morning when one aftershock hit. I still didn't feel a thing. But the outside of the house has sustained some damage and it doesn't look too safe now. We need a better house but can't get a loan to buy and rent prices are way too high for our budget...sigh. If that New Madrid fault goes, we may be homeless.

I live right outside of Fort Knox. I myself didn't feel a thing because I had gone to bed at 1:30 and was dog tired. After waking up at 11:30 my wife asked me if I had felt the quake, nope I haden't felt a thing. The news came on at 12 and reported that the quake reached 5.2(had been reported earlier as being 5.4) and that at 11:14 there was an aftershock which reached 4.5. I guess one of these days I'll feel an earthquake, on second thought no thank you.

It was weird no doubt, and I thought these things would only happen in California, until now.

From what I heard it occur in Illinois where the said EQ hit.  I felt a slight shake in my own bedroom that morning at 5:30 and woke myself up from that.  I live in an apartment for 30+ years in Cincinnati, Ohio and w/ no foundation it can be really scary.  Just the morning after, I felt a little shaking again.

Creepy!

JB

That's why I mentioned the New Madrid/Madras fault.  When it quaked back in 1811/12, it was felt for something like 50,000 square miles.  This fault network up the Mississippi river is a big one - but not as volatile as the San Andreas in California.  This is probably because the Calif. one is a more active regional plate (the so-called "Ring of Fire" that encompasses the Pacific ocean).  The Mid-American plates aren't as active but when they go, watch out!  This 5.2 magnitude might be a good thing - whenever a plate shifts a bit and has a mild earthquake it is relieving stresses in a less dramatic way.  This should preclude worse events in the near future.

OT but related: I just saw a "Mega Disaster" episode about Mt. Vesuvius.  Quite interesting.  Here you have a volcano that has gone off hundreds of times in the past 10000 years - with a well-know history of activity (79, 1631, 1944 among many others in recorded history).  Yet, there are millions of people living within its destructive range blissfully hoping that it won't happen to them.  Naples is considered to be within the 'pyroclastic cloud' range if it expands in a westerly fashion.  This is incredible!  Millions of people could die nearly instantly and they know it but they hedge their bets and continue to live in the shadow of this repeat offender.  Many vulcanologists think it is nearing its next eruption and I keep my ears open for news.

The thing about New Madrid is that it is an interplate fault; the rock is much harder, and transmits the shock a lot farther than ever happens out around San Andreas, which is plate interaction faulting (the structures there are far more brittle, crumble constantly, and create seismic 'buffers', for lack of a better term). The general rule of thumb is that a major quake here would be felt over 4 times the distance of a similar quake in the LA basin. The 1811-1812 triple ran church bells in Philadelphia, for instance. Also, New Madrid is smack over the Reelfoot Rift; the spot in the NA plate that tried to split and form another couple of continents. So you have the energy of the plate deforming concentrating at the weakest point, which winds up the the higher fault system even more. And yeah, Vesuvius is a catastrophe just itching to happen...and the pyroclastic cloud is just the first slap. There would be the tremors, the acidifying of ground water, the ash fall, and God help any aircraft within shockwave range. That kind of sudden overpressure could stall jet engines. And jetliners aren't designed to be flipped over axially or sent into a tailspin and be recoverable in the time the pilots would have. So if it happened at the right time, you might have a dozen Airbuses come falling out of the sky in the 'safe' areas.

I live 20miles outside of Chicago and I was up and on the computer when the earthquake hit yesterday morning. When it hit I didn't know what was happening I thought my legs were getting restless cause I was getting overtired and needed to go to bed :tongue2: . I only found out it was an earthquake a little later on when I turned on the news before I went to bed hehe, I was sleeping for the after shock so not sure if it could be felt all the way up here.

Some weeks ago I saw "Supervolcano" , a docudrama about the volcano below  the yellowstone Park, it that one really errupts, it renders vesuvius to a firecracker.

Bopper.

If Yellowstone park blows a large portion of the USA will go with it!

Yep.  Let's hope it doesn't blow for a few million years. ;)  There is speculation that a similar eruption in Siberia might have been a more direct cause of Dinosaur extinction (it may have been set off by the purported ELE impact at about the same time).

In a less direct response to the original topic question: I can feel it, Dave.

See what happens when you stay up way too late? I was up watching TV and doing laundry, and felt another quake here in central Indiana (Indianapolis). Just checked out the USGS website, and sure enough, a 4.5 quake was registered at 12:38 Central Time in the same location in Illinois as last week's 5.2! Don't know if this is considered another aftershock, or a separate event.

Whole lotta shakin' goin' on in the midwest!

Quote - See what happens when you stay up way too late? I was up watching TV and doing laundry, and felt another quake here in central Indiana (Indianapolis). Just checked out the USGS website, and sure enough, a 4.5 quake was registered at 12:38 Central Time in the same location in Illinois as last week's 5.2! Don't know if this is considered another aftershock, or a separate event.

Whole lotta shakin' goin' on in the midwest!

Yeah I felt it too  4.5 huh? Wonder whats going on around here I'm in Terre Haute btw the 5.2 i  thought it was a damned train going by at first and then it  kept going and got  stronger than any train ever was kinda scared me to be truthful.... LOL I'm not sure that I trust the building I'm in to stand up to much shaking to be honest, (shitty university apartment building they laid the bricks wrong in my opinion courses strait up instead of staggered )

Well at least the one tonight was weaker instead of stronger than the 5.2.

Yeah I was awake for this one as well. "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" LOL!

We had an earthquake a few weeks back; mind you, this was in England!

Oh and in light of someone else's very long winded thread about posting rules. I appologise that I neglected to title this thread as OT.