Minions (who do my bidding) and Followers (who do not)

About Me

My photo
Mama, wife, knitter, blogger, spinner, wannabe something or other. That's enough, right?

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Earthquake!

As many of you know, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, by way of 32 years in Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, we have thunderstorms, flooding, horrendous winters (both cold and snowy), and tornadoes.

Here in the Bay Area, we have drought and.....dun dun dun.....EARTHQUAKES.

Now, an earthquake is not necessarily unheard of in southern Wisconsin but they're a very rare occurrence and because of the underlying bedrock, they're felt much further away at much smaller magnitudes. Seriously, in my entire 32 years in southern Wisconsin, I think I felt a total of three earthquakes, all stemming from northern Illinois. That's not true here. Here, both Husband and I have felt relatively small earthquakes (less than 2.0 magnitude). We didn't grow up with them being commonplace so we're more attuned to them...I think. Even if that's not true, that's what I'm going to go with.

We've lived here two years now and while we've always been aware that earthquakes are a pretty frequent occurrence, they're also usually small and unassuming (under 3.0 magnitude). Still, you bolt furniture (bookshelves) to the walls, don't let breakables hang out on bookshelves without something holding them in place, and have a plan...which we don't have but perhaps we need one.

Very early this morning, at approximately 3:22am, we experienced our first major earthquake. The epicenter was located up toward Napa, which is about 45 miles north of us, and the USGS said it was a 6.0 magnitude. 

We were sleeping, as one does in the middle of the night, and I woke up and thought Husband was shaking the bed. So, in my pregnancy-induced, sleep-deprived state, I smacked him and told him to stop shaking the bed. He woke up and said he wasn't shaking the bed. Then we realized the bookshelves were shaking, the bed was shaking, and basically, the whole house was shaking. It didn't last that long, maybe a minute at most, but being our first major earthquake, we were freaked out a bit. Okay, I was more freaked out than Husband but we were still both freaked out. Little Man slept through it. Puppy didn't even flinch. We had no damage to speak of but we definitely felt it.

So, we are okay here in San Mateo. Napa is pretty messed up, however.

That's all I know from here.......hope you're having a lovely Sunday. I'll be back with more knitting content this week as I have another FO to share :)

1 comment:

  1. A San Andreas fault earthquake of that magnitude will be way worse. Have you ever gone on the earthquake exhibit at the Academy of Sciences?

    ReplyDelete