At 11:40 pm last night, brushing my teeth, suddenly the house was twisting/shaking incomprehensibly. Was reported by the the US Geological Survey as 4.8 magnitude quake, just NNE of downtown Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Pretty freaky, felt like someone was trying to break the house. Only lasted a few seconds, with a bit more vibration up to about the 10 second mark.
I was recently watching a TV program on plate tectonics and saw that up in your area one can dig down through thousands of centuries of the geologic record and find fossilized palm leaves. Was it that warm up there back then? No. Those palms are on the plate moving north and were down around the southern California/Mexico area back when they were alive. You just experienced the most recent "step" in a very long walk. Amazing.
As in, not much compared to the California quakes? Yeah, you can keep them, lol. We get very infrequent, mild quakes. The last was maybe a decade back, centered in Seattle. That was mild, rolling motion, went on for some time, close to a minute. The one the other night was much shorter, a matter of 4~5 seconds, with slight sway for the next 10 seconds. But man-o-man, it really felt like something structural was going to break for a bit, really shook the house.
12/30/2015 -- California Volcanic Earthquakes + Midwest EQ Damage = Major Unrest across US by dutchsinse
yep, freaky is the only way to describe it. i've been through two, one in southern new hampshire, thought the boiler blew up or a bulldozer hit the house. only a second. the other here, just some rumbling and vibration for one or two seconds.
When we get earthquakes here, and we do every few years, they are more of a BANG than a roll or lurch. A large sonic boom might be similar with our versions of 4.x's. I live very near the busiest rail corridor in the country and some heavy freights will make the house shake and roll just a bit; those situations are more classic earthquake-like. I have learned from some TV shows that if we get a real big one here, it will seem more like the concussive force of a very very large explosion, which could be just as damaging, and deadly from glass panels blowing clean out of buildings downtown and raining death to those below.
