Wednesday, October 13, 2010

A 4.5 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Oklahoma Near Norman And Is Felt In North Texas

You are looking at the Richter Scale representation of what happened a short time after 9 this morning.

An earthquake.

Around that time I felt the earth move with that familiar vibration I experienced so many times when I lived in the Pacific Northwest.

This morning vibration was of short duration, about 10 seconds. There was none of the roaring noise I've come to associate with an earthquake.

I figured it was a passing large truck shaking the ground.

And then, a few minutes ago I heard from Elsie Hotpepper asking me if I'd felt the earth move in Fort Worth. Now, I am used to Elsie Hotpepper asking me cryptic questions, the answer to which, at times, is difficult for me to come up with.

So, I Googled "Fort Worth Earthquake" and to my great surprise I learned that at 9:06 AM, Wednesday, October 13, a 4.5 magnitude earthquake, at a depth between 3.1 and 4.4 miles, epicentered about 10 miles east of Norman, Oklahoma, 20 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, gave quite a strong jolt, felt as far away as my location in North Texas.

The biggest quake I've ever experienced was a 6.5, with me 60 or 70 miles north of the epicenter.

A couple years before I moved to Texas, where I lived in Mount Vernon went through a series of quakes of the 2 to 3 magnitude, epicentered just a couple miles east, by Big Lake. Those quakes felt real strong. They caused the windows to sort of bulge, made a real loud noise. The Big Lake Quakes cracked the ceramic tile in my kitchen. I remember, for one of them, I was laying on my waterbed. Suddenly it was like I was on the ocean in rough waves.

Usually with an earthquake there are aftershocks. So, far, I have felt none.

1 comment:

Elvis said...

Was there a convention of those fracking gasbaggers there? Any cheat-sapeake executive swallowed by the earth as in the old testament?