Earthquake Hits Illinois

[Mari333]

Source: WGN

A magnitude 4.3 earthquake hit northern Illinois early Wednesday morning

Read more: http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-earthquake-illinois-february10,0,3142674.story

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wtf!!!


I have got to call my son in chicago..they said it was felt in chicago!!

[Skittles]

1. I felt an earthquake tremor outside of Chicago when I was in high school

would have been about '73 or '74

[Mari333]

2. wonder what kind of fault line runs thru there

jeebus!

[dipsydoodle]

5. Probably a flaw within a plate.

By coincidence there was a program on one of the tv documentary channels a few days back about similar events in the UK which are firtunately few and far between. In 1580 a quake with a magnitude of about six killed two people in London but a similar event today could cause chaos due to the high rise office buildings and risk of damage to the underground tube railway. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6603169.stm

[rpannier]

6. The New Madrid Fault line runs up into Cairo, IL

That's the only one I could find in Illinois

[Mari333]

8. listening to the chicago radio right now, says its a 'bedrock defect'

they are talking about how this has happened before in this area...defect in the bedrock thats about a mile or so long, they say..no fault line, just disturbance in the bedrock...says the geological guy on the radio, Bob Bower, of the Ill state geological society

[KamaAina]

34. That's all the way at the other end of the state

two or three hundred miles from Chi-town.

[rpannier]

36. That's true

I was just pointing out that it is the only fault line I could find listed for the state of Illinois.

Just answering the question that was all.

[Skittles]

11. all I remember is a bit of noise and all my books sliding off my bed

weird!!!

[madokie]

20. Way back in the early years of my being we felt some small quakes here in northeastern OK

[bigworld]

24. That was in 1974.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/illinois/history.php

[Lasher]

3. About half the magnitude of the one in Haiti.

Which was 7.0

[Demeter]

7. Magnitudes Are Not Linear, But Logarithmic

So a 4.3 is more like 1/600th of the Haitian.

If I remember logarithms correctly. It's been 40 years...


http://oakroadsystems.com/math/loglaws.htm

[Lasher]

14. OK thanks for the education.

[AngryAmish]

9. Richter scale operates on orders of magnitude

So a 3 is ten times more powerful than a 2.
To quote "The Richter magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs (adjustments are included to compensate for the variation in the distance between the various seismographs and the epicenter of the earthquake). The original formula is:<4>

where A is the maximum excursion of the Wood-Anderson seismograph, the empirical function A0 depends only on the epicentral distance of the station, δ. In practice, readings from all observing stations are averaged after adjustment with station-specific corrections to obtain the ML value.
Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; in terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released."

So to say it was half the magnitude of the Haiti quake is quite meaningless. Haiti - HUUUUUGGGE earthquake. DeKalb - wee, wee little quake.

[Mari333]

4. more from the geological survey

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/us2010snay.php

[Saturday]

10. I felt it, my house shook.

It only lasted maybe 5 seconds but it was very obvious. Sycamore, IL was the center.

[DailyGrind51]

12. It was just Steven Lee Cohen falling out of bed with the nightmare of spending

$2 million of his own money to win the nomination for LT. Governor and being forced to remove his name from candidacy in the main election.

[tomm2thumbs]

13. seems as though DU has scooped the big sites today

thanks for posting - will keep an eye out for updates - hope all are safe

[City Lights]

15. I slept right through it.

Didn't feel a thing.

[Mari333]

16. ahh Ill bet my son snored thru it too in chicago

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

17. I remember two

in the 1980s

[carla]

38. Had much bigger before...

The 1811 and 1812 New Madrid Earthquakes are the most intense intraplate earthquake series to have occurred in the contiguous United States in historic times.

I remember reading that the quake shifted the Mississippi River from its bed a large distance.

[Mind_your_head]

18. I felt it - it woke me up

The house shook and I thought either something had hit the house or that the winds were really really strong...but then there was nothing after that. I looked over at the clock and it said 4:00 am. Went over to the USGS site and there was nothing there yet, so I went back to sleep. Now I see it was an earthquake.

[Mari333]

19. callers on wgn radio this morning

'felt like a freight train was right next to the house'
'thought there was an explosion at the power plant near us'
'dog woke up barking everything shook'
'woke up whole family thought the furnace exploded'
'huge loud noise BOOM like explosion, everything shook...'

[spiritual_gunfighter]

22. I had no idea it was an earthquake either

the entire building I live in shook and stuff upstairs fell down on the floor above me. I just thought some really big guy was walking down the stairs in my building or something, but now I see it was an earthquake.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

21. I felt it!

I had no idea what was going on, I live in an apartment complex and thought it was my neighbors.

[JoDog]

23. I didn't feel it

but my parakeets did. They woke me up.

[ChicagoSuz219]

25. Slept thru it.

Didn't even know about it 'til I saw this posting.

[Mari333]

26. just downgraded to 3.8 , heard it on the news and

geologist on the news says it is felt more strongly in ill. because the bedrock is so hard...and that makes the reverberations stronger when it happens, unlike california fault lines at that magnitude

[sharesunited]

27. I was sure that a snowplow had smashed into the living room.

[CanonRay]

28. Had a 4 something when I was a teenager in the 60's

My bed rolled across the floor. I had no idea what was going on, having never experienced it before (or since)

[LibertyLover]

29. I went to college in Chicago

One afternoon I was sitting on my bed in my dorm room reading when I felt the oddest motion. It was a rolling wave-like action. It felt like my bed was being lifted up on a wave and then lowered. It happened 2 times more and then stopped. While I had never felt an earthquake before, I was sure it was one. My dorm was on a residential street and my room 6 flights up so the occasional truck going down the road didn't cause vibrations that I could feel. I turned on the tv and sure enough they were running a special bulletin about the quake that had just been felt. Its epicenter was, IIRC, in the northern part of the state.

[cactusfractal]

30. The people of Chicago made a deal with the devil... true story!

/snark

[closeupready]

31. We had one here in New York back in 1998 - that was very weird.

I felt the whole building shake, and I knew instantly that it was an earthquake, which you don't expect in New York, but having been through a big one before (Northridge), it scared me. :scared:

[goclark]

39. Los Angeles checking in ~ I was here for the Northridge

Quake. It was terrible!

I've lived here for 50 years and that was the topper for me.

I lived in Michigan in the 90's and felt one there ~ the staff laughed at me and told me that " Michigan did not have earthquakes."

The next day of course, I won ~ it was minor to me compared to CA.

[Kota]

32. I thought a snowplow hit the house.

I'm in Sycamore and the noise is what woke me first. Very loud.

[Mugu]

37. I live just outside Sycamore and was writing an email when this occurred.

I had the music cranked up and by the time I got it turned down it was all over. I thought maybe thunder, but it didn't happen again so I went back to what I was doing.

[LeftHander]

33. Illinois Earthquake Panic 2010!!

Panicked residents of several Illinois communities ran from their homes early this morning on learning that a 3.3 earthquake had occurred. Residents ran into the street in pajamas in various states of panic and shock. Many suffered scratches and minor frost bite as they waited in the cold in bare feet for emergency services to arrive.

EXTV 6 remote truck was overturned by earthquake survivors looking for food and water. The mob dispersed after it was discovered water and power services were still working.

Community leaders are calling for calm and a international response to provide trauma counseling and free dispersal of anti-depression medications and iPhones.

[woo me with science]

35. The weather reports around here are starting to sound like an Al Gore movie. nt

[Posteritatis]

40. Earthquakes aren't weather. (nt)