Earthquake Roanoke-Style

Hi Y'all! This graphic to the left is courtesy of WSLS of Roanoke, VA. I don't think we had much of anything over which to take a picture or a video of regarding this morning's earthquake - Thank Heavens!!!

However, the US Geological Survey has upped our inital level from a 2.6 magnitude to a 3.0 magnitude earthquake. (I did not feel anything this morning, but that may be due either to working in Entertainment - which means late nights and passing out dead - or to living out in North County, close to Botetourt... I dunno).

In the WSLS report today, Dr. Martin Chapman at the seismological observatory at Virginia Tech stated, “A magnitude three earthquake like we had today would be about a thousand times bigger than a magnitude zero earthquake."

Indeed, that is cause for excitement, both scary and otherwise, if you were awake to have felt it. I lived in Central New Jersey all my life before coming here in 2005, and experienced only one such small earthquake (for which I had been awake). The bed shook, as I recall. It also sounded like a distant rumble of thunder yet you knew it was very nearby as it permeated the darkness of night and did not have the distinct echo of actual far-away thunder. It could be felt through the membranes of your very marrow. Spooky...

I did notice something unusual last night, though. My house is not prone to settling, yet every so often, there were creeks and pops a little around the time before the hour of this quake, which is officially stated to have happened at 4am. I was awake up until about 3am. (Sort of awake, reading a book after a long day of editing and mixing a local songwriter's live CD.)

Well, let's all be glad this wasn't anything more dramatic than something to talk about today. In fact, I had no idea until Ms. Pearl Fu of Local Colors mentioned it on stage at this year's Annual Local Colors event at Elmwood Park in Downtown Roanoke this morning.

By the way, we went out to shoot footage of Local Colors. We'll bring you the video and a blog post on it early this next week. (I ran 3 hours of tape very easily. There was SOOOO much cool stuff that went on, I just couldn't shut the camera off!!)

Hopefully, this quake isn't a pre-shock and will remain a one-off for now. The bigger quake today was definitely the Local Colors festivities!!