Local Quake Tremor
Two days ago, toward twilight, I heard a terrifically loud noise that sounded as if it had come from somewhere just outside my workshop building. I rushed out on the deck, fully expecting to see huge plumes of some shooting up over the nearby trees. But none such, and no successive noises either. That wall of trees to the west was peacefully interlaced only with the light of the setting sun as usual, and the sky held only some large, dark clouds, which made me think that I had heard only a thunderclap. But I know the sound of thunder, and this had been definitely something else. It had sounded just as if somebody's house had been packed with explosives, and a fuse had been set to it -- or as if a blockbuster bomb had been dropped by a plane and detonated just a few hundred feet away.
I decided to blame the noise on the thunder of a gathering storm anyway, one that never arrived, though I wasn't convinced of that at all.
I was surprised to realize that I had given no more thought to it till somebody brought it up yesterday at the Thanksgiving dinner that every year we share with two neighboring families. This person said that the noise had been due to an earthquake tremor.
If true, that would be the second quake tremor that I have experienced while living here. (They are illegal and, for obvious reasons having to do with power and such, are not allowed to take place where I was born and raised, in Washington, D.C.) But I was outside during the first trtemor here in Virginia, about 10 years ago, and the sensation then had not been any sort of noise that I can remember, aside from the comment of the trees. Instead it had felt like all the world around me had undergone a slight, short-lived ripple, like a sheet of thin metal being flexed.
So I am wondering. That explosion had been far too loud not for something to have been drastically damaged somewhere under the trees and fields..
I wonder if it had been a warning of worse to come, and soon.
Quite often the rains here are like that. We'll get a scattering of a few drops, and then nothing for 10 minutes or a half-hour, before the full storm sweeps in, in all its glory.
.
I decided to blame the noise on the thunder of a gathering storm anyway, one that never arrived, though I wasn't convinced of that at all.
I was surprised to realize that I had given no more thought to it till somebody brought it up yesterday at the Thanksgiving dinner that every year we share with two neighboring families. This person said that the noise had been due to an earthquake tremor.
If true, that would be the second quake tremor that I have experienced while living here. (They are illegal and, for obvious reasons having to do with power and such, are not allowed to take place where I was born and raised, in Washington, D.C.) But I was outside during the first trtemor here in Virginia, about 10 years ago, and the sensation then had not been any sort of noise that I can remember, aside from the comment of the trees. Instead it had felt like all the world around me had undergone a slight, short-lived ripple, like a sheet of thin metal being flexed.
So I am wondering. That explosion had been far too loud not for something to have been drastically damaged somewhere under the trees and fields..
I wonder if it had been a warning of worse to come, and soon.
Quite often the rains here are like that. We'll get a scattering of a few drops, and then nothing for 10 minutes or a half-hour, before the full storm sweeps in, in all its glory.
.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:54 AM
1 Comments:
Stopped in to Say Hi! We had that tremor thing several years ago, from an actual earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico. I only felt it because I was still in bed and laying still. Nothing since then, so hopefully it will be like that for you!
Finals week this week, hopefully I will get a couple of posts up before class starts again next month! Maybe some pictures?
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