The World's gone mad - earthquake in UK

thebigsky

We've just experienced the hottest April since records began and this morning we awoke to news of an earthquake in the south east, I tell you, the World's gone made, well in the UK anyway :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6602677.stm

I'm sure some of you living in the more seismically active parts of the world may liken this to someone passing wind, but this is pretty peculiar for us Brits.

Charlie

gus

thebigsky wrote:

We've just experienced the hottest April since records began and this morning we awoke to news of an earthquake in the south east, I tell you, the World's gone made, well in the UK anyway :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6602677.stm

I'm sure some of you living in the more seismically active parts of the world may liken this to someone passing wind, but this is pretty peculiar for us Brits.

Charlie

wow...thats rare for that part of the world. We had one here a while back also...i was standing in the kitched & a large window started vibrating in front of me. I didnt know what was going on because we dont get them.

gus

You shouldnt speak of things.

An hour & 11 mins after i typed that above...we got a report of small one north of here. How weird is that ? Assuming it took the net an hour to report it or so, it would have happened about the same time.

LiquidAir

thebigsky wrote:

We've just experienced the hottest April since records began and this morning we awoke to news of an earthquake in the south east, I tell you, the World's gone made, well in the UK anyway :-

Heh, the UK has been mad for quite a long time. That is a big part of its charm.:D

I enjoyed the geologist's comments:

This is by no means a complete surprise, there have been earthquakes in this location before. Two of them have been some of the biggest earthquakes ever to affect Britain. The first was in 1382 and in 1580 a quake with a magnitude of about six killed two people in London.

1382!? Here in California if we haven't had a mag 4 before breakfast something is wrong. Our newspaper has geological report on the same page as the weather; It has circles marking the epicenters of all the earthquakes in the last week.

gus

LiquidAir wrote:

Heh, the UK has been mad for quite a long time. That is a big part of its charm.:D

I enjoyed the geologist's comments:



1382!? Here in California if we haven't had a mag 4 before breakfast something is wrong. Our newspaper has geological report on the same page as the weather; It has circles marking the epicenters of all the earthquakes in the last week.

What size do they have to be before you can notice them ?

LiquidAir

gus wrote:

What size do they have to be before you can notice them ?

Sorry, was joking about the mag 4 before breakfast thing...

It depends on how far away you are. A 4 will be felt and noticed in most of the SF Bay Area. A 3 is a much more local thing and if you are any distance away you'll write it off as a truck (sorry, lorry) driving by. I can't think of a time when I felt a mag 2 and was certain at the time it was an earthquake. 4s are uncommon and 5+ is rare. On an average week we get several 1s and 2s and often something in the 3 category within 150 miles of SF.

thebigsky

I was surprised by the amount of small tremors that occurred whilst I was in San Francisco, I guess it's just a way of life there.

As you can imagine this has been headline news all day, but only one minor neck injury to report.

Charlie

wxwax

You can only keep them underground for so long.

Eventually they're going to fight their way out.

Bedlam is upon us.

LiquidAir

thebigsky wrote:

I was surprised by the amount of small tremors that occurred whilst I was in San Francisco, I guess it's just a way of life there.

As you can imagine this has been headline news all day, but only one minor neck injury to report.

Charlie

Its funny, living here I get subconciously accustomed to construction designed to withstand earthquakes (not that all of it is.). When I visit the UK it always feels like the buildings are going to fall down. Of course some of those buildings have been there 800 years.

David_S85

The world is cracking in half. But don't worry about it - be happy - take pictures.

Nikolai

David_S85 wrote:

The world is cracking in half. But don't worry about it - be happy - take pictures.

As usual, the real question is: use the long tele to bring out the details of a particularly hot area or go super wide to capture the whole picture.. Decisions, decisions...

And yes, here in Cali we do have earthquakes for breakfast.

ChrisJ

LiquidAir wrote:

Sorry, was joking about the mag 4 before breakfast thing...

It depends on how far away you are. A 4 will be felt and noticed in most of the SF Bay Area. A 3 is a much more local thing and if you are any distance away you'll write it off as a truck (sorry, lorry) driving by. I can't think of a time when I felt a mag 2 and was certain at the time it was an earthquake. 4s are uncommon and 5+ is rare. On an average week we get several 1s and 2s and often something in the 3 category within 150 miles of SF.

It also depends on how deep the quake is... a deeper quake will be felt over a wider area, but won't feel as strong. A shallow quake can be fairly low on the richter scale, and have a small area of impact, but feel quite strong.

tsk1979

We get lots of quakes, atleast one biggie once a year.
But fortunately these 6.5-7.5 intesity quakes usually have an epicenter hundreds of miles away somewhere in the Himalays, where the Indian plate rubs against the Eurasian plate.
People in the hill states of Uttrananchal/Himachal/J&K in India, and those in Afghanisthan, Pakistan are not so lucky as they bear the brunt of it all.
That said in New Delhi earthquake is a word that strikes fear. Of natural calamities like Floods, tornado's etc., earthquake is the only one which has the potential to flatten half the city with thousands of casualities.
Few years ago the western state of gujrat got a major earthquake hitting population centers on a national holiday in the morning when people were just getting out of beds after a long "holiday sleep".
Thousands perished.
A few days ago there was a minor quake(epicenter in himalayas) and almost everybody indoors rushed outdoor. Luckily it was a small one.

claudermilk

Nikolai wrote:

And yes, here in Cali we do have earthquakes for breakfast.

Yup. None of those would slow most of us down--after a while you just get used to it & end up thinking "oh, gee, another earthquake" pause a second to judge it "nah, no biggie, that one's way far away, on to my next bowl of cereal" I still am amused by one of the larger ones that hit up in Ventura a few years ago; we still felt it pretty good down in O.C. I was at the library at the time & just kept looking up books on the computer while it was going on...while people in the stacks were freaking out. They all looked at me like I had grown a second head afterwards. "What? It was, like, up in LA somewhere..."

LiquidAir

ChrisJ wrote:

It also depends on how deep the quake is... a deeper quake will be felt over a wider area, but won't feel as strong. A shallow quake can be fairly low on the richter scale, and have a small area of impact, but feel quite strong.

I was less than 15 miles from the epicenter of both the mag 5.9 1987 Whittier quake and the mag 7.1 1989 Loma Prieta quake (talk about luck eh?). The Whittier quake was a very sharp jolt that woke me up in the morning but it was quite short. The Loma Prieta quake started simliarly but shook long enough that you could think about it while it was happening.

When you are farther from the epicenter you feel rolling waves rather than the sharper jolt of being nearby. The distance smooths things out, but also extends the shaking a bit. Once you have ridden out a few quakes you get generally roughly guess how far away the epicenter was by how sharp the shake was.

ultravox

Earthquake... well, except my bad photos there is nothing that I dislike most. S[SIZE=-1]tatisticaley, once every 30 yrs. we are "blessed" with a big one (7. or more on the Richter scale) The last one was in 1977... I was 10 and I do recall... I hope I'll live to tell the story again (with photos of course ). [/SIZE]

Nikolai

Cristian,

ultravox wrote:

Earthquake... well, except my bad photos there is nothing that I dislike most. S[SIZE=-1]tatisticaley, once every 30 yrs. we are "blessed" with a big one (7. or more on the Richter scale) The last one was in 1977... I was 10 and I do recall... I hope I'll live to tell the story again (with photos of course ). [/SIZE]

The earthquakes are like drinks: the idea is to have many little ones you can enjoy, not just a single huge one that can kill you

Cheers!

gmonkeh

One of the worst earthquakes I've ever been in was here in Seattle a few years back. It happened early morning and I just thought a train was passing by. But upon further consideration, I realize I didn't live anywhere near a train.

It shook my bed quite violently and the TV in my living room fell off the entertainment center. I felt like Linda Blair from exorcist during the tremor. "The power of God compels you!"

Lex

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/quake/pdf/Seattle_PIMA1X120010301.pdf

ChrisJ

gmonkeh wrote:

One of the worst earthquakes I've ever been in was here in Seattle a few years back.

Yep, I was in 520 Pike Tower on the 9th floor. Pretty scary actually. My wife was in the Rainier Tower (the one the looks like a beaver had been gnawing at it), and she said it swayed for several minutes afterward... made some people queasy.

evoryware

Perfect time to test your Image Stabilization lenses. Glad it wasn't that bad.

Pezpix

Heh, welcome to the show

FYI Earthquakes are a fun novelty until they get about 5.8 magnitude or more IMO... especially when they happen while you are in the middle of a macro shoot