Citizen science, moderate temblor version

[ritaxis]

So we're all sitting around the house, doing what we do (after a delicious meal of sauteed mixed forest mushrooms -- grisette, chanterelle, and calyptrata -- and brown rice pilaf with dried craterellus. It rained yesterday!). The house begins to shake. Earthquake. Nobody moves. The house keeps shaking, harder and harder. And it goes on. So we all simultaneously, swiftly but without rushing, go to the nearest doorways and stand in them for what seems like a very very long time till the house stops shaking. As soon as we're sure it's over Emma and I both dive back to our computers to report it to the USGS recent earthquake site. Our earthquake isn't even on the map when we start filling out the forms!

The USGS computer automagically produces an earthquake report from the reports us citizens file and I think a few sensors here and there. Refreshing it a few minutes later gets an updated report which has been reviewed by a seismologist.

What we got: a moderate (5.6) quake centered 15 km northeast of San Jose City Hall, at 9 km deep, occuring at 8:04:59 pm PDT. Probability of strong aftershock in the next week: 30%. Of a quake stronger than the first one: 5-10%. Expecting 15 or so weak aftershocks. If you click around the site, you'll find shake maps, topo maps of the region, etc. The shake map is not up for this one yet, alas.

I love this stuff. I do have to admit I got kind of concerned when the earthquake kept going on and on.

Comments

part of it is

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

that living in the city center and the geography of Kansas City, for whatever reason we've never had a tornado plow through the part of downtown where I live. As far as I know, We're just above the ancient flood plain on the bluffs (the ancient crow roosts I've mentioned) and I think it breaks up weather flow sufficently to crack tornados.

While I was still working at home we did have one extremely weird weather event--the sky got the evil green that it gets duriing tornado weather, I thought I was seeing Wall clouds but could not be certain because the summer tree cover is pretty large. And the pressure seemed to be building (I had windows open because it was not too hot, not too cold). All of a sudden I could hear something like someone walking through grass.... really big grass. It passed to the west of the house, but it was some kind of line-wind phenomena, not severe enough to do more than stir the trees. But in an in-line fashion. Pretty creepy.

In an earthquake,everything manmade and a lot of natural features can go wonky if it shakes long enough. In even a severe tornado, if you get to a safe shelter underground, you may lose property but you don't lose lives.

I expect the whole perception of danger thing is related to what one grew up with, too. Though I know I would never want to live within the splash-range of the coasts.(tsunami/hurricane)

Re: part of it is

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think it's what you're used to. But fire still freaks me out, and I spent my childhood in fire country. Flood bothers me too. I think earthquakes are the least scary because they are the most discrete. Shake, rattle, roll, it's over. More or less.

That description of the wind thing is spine-tingly. I'm trying to imagine the line-wind.