The Week in Earthquakes

Who would have thunk it, earthquakes in Colorado and Virginia. We Californians tend to chuckle at the evacuated buildings in D.C. We would never get anything done if we ran outside every time the earth moved. The best line I heard was a native Golden Stater who said: "Five point Two, hell that's just enough to rock my kid to sleep."

Late last night, after I send out several smug emails to my east coast friends who were all afrazzle about their big quake, well I was shaken out of bed by a little (3.6) tembler epicentered about six miles from my 8th floor apartment. Then this morning another one. Makes you wanna go immediately to thelordiswarningustochangeourways.com and check the Armageddon Alarm Clock.

But seriously, this would be a good week for those of you not living in Alaska, California, Hawaii or Puerto Rico to take a look at a weekly map of quakes in the U.S. I think you might be surprised just how often the planet does shake, rattle and roll.

Oh and that picture up top comes from not from California but from the fields of Tennessee, where we find the New Madrid Fault that includes parts of Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas. On December 16, 1811 a 7.2 quake was recorded on this fault line, but you know what they say - "these things only happened about once every two hundred years."
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• just a tiny bookkeeping note - this is the 600th post on my blog since I began in '07