Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Second Quake Hits Midwest
This intrepid (if I do say so myself) reporter was sitting at her desk, minding her own business, getting some work writing done when another quake rocked the Midwest. No reports yet on if this quake was an aftershock of the previous quake or an entirely new quake.
As you may know, an earthquake powered through the Midwest at about 4:30 this morning, central time. I was in bed and was awoken by the slight shaking which felt a lot like a large truck passing by. Of course, no such truck rolled by and eventually the panes in our windows stopped rattling. The main quake was centered near Bellmont, Illinois, near the border of Indiana. A New York Times report claims that the quake could be felt as far away as Cincinnati and Milwaukee.
There is no word yet on the quake that just occurred at roughly 10:15 this morning. We don’t yet know the magnitude or reason for the shaking.
Our quake measured 5.2 on the Richter scale. As you may remember from school, the Richter scale is a scale that measures the amount of energy released in an earthquake. Even a tenth of a point on the scale is a significant difference in the amount of energy released. A quake of this magnitude is enough to cause damage to poorly designed buildings or rattle pictures off of walls. Those of us who live in well-constructed buildings have little to worry about.
St. Louis, where I live, sits in a silt-covered valley where two major rivers converge, the Mississippi and Missouri. This silty material provides a great way to transmit the waves created by an earthquake. Other areas of the midwest that sit close to bedrock probably won’t feel the quake as well, if at all.
For more information on the Richter magnitude scale, see the Wikipedia article.
