Rare #earthquake in NJ. pic.twitter.com/rAnNDcZzh8
— Woke Zombie 🇺🇸😊 (@AWokeZombie) April 5, 2024
We just had a 4.8 earthquake here on the East Coast. It felt really different from the one we had in 2011. Like in that one, I was sitting at my desk. But the last time, the floor felt like a wave and my chair was rolling back and forth. The grass cracked on several framed prints. The shelves next to my desk were rocking, I was afraid they would fall over.
In this one, it just felt like something huge hit the side of my house. The entire building shook.
For some reason, eclipse periods activate earthquakes. Same as it ever was!
I had a geophysicist explain this to me once. That slamming-into-the-wall wave is a P-wave. Those travel faster than S-waves. The latter produce the side to side motion. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_wave ) How it feels locally depends somewhat on the type of quake and the type of ground you’re on.
I’m pretty sure I also remember he said you could do a very rough estimate of how far away the epicenter is by the difference in time of arrival of the two waves. The longer the difference, the farther away the epicenter, and therefore the bigger the quake since you’re feeling it at such a big distance.
That is so cool, thanks. That p-wave was a bitch! I wish I’d counted, but I do know I’m 55 miles or so from the epicenter.