Fast Fiction

This morning, I and probably quite a few other SoCal residents were woken by an earthquake. Not a large one, just a 4.4 about one mile north of Fontana (a city I know nothing about, except that they have an Ikea according to my latest catalog). It was not a bad quake, just a long smooth shaky thing. It woke the dog, and caused her to pace around the room until it was over (a mere 20 seconds or so). (The USGS site also showed that there were several smaller quakes in the hours and minutes before that one, which I did not feel.)

But here’s what’s cool. After quakes I usually go to the USGS quake site - Los Angeles/Caltech Seismic Net and check out where it was and how big. I try to figure where they are, based on the shaking and length and have gotten pretty good at it. I felt no P/S wave distinction, which usually says to me that it was far away, and the fact that it went on so long but not intensely said to me that it was bigger than a 4 but no more than a 4.8 or so and within 100 miles.

So I went to the site and there’s an option when you click on a quake that you can input your own details about the quake and it’ll generate a Shake Intensity Map based on eyewitness accounts. I’ve been doing this pretty faithfully for about five years (and even went back and put in my account for the Northridge quake).