This afternoon, I was at my computer, getting a podcast episode ready to be posted when I felt a small shaking. I jumped up to a doorframe, fearing I would end up getting shook up worse – the doorframe thing might be an urban legend, but it would certainly be a safer place than perched on a stool over a concrete floor. Thankfully, it was a massive overreaction on my part.
It wasn’t until later that I found out that the shaking at my computer desk was the result of an earthquake in Virginia. A friend of mine asked me about it on QQ and I promptly went to Twitter for the skinny. The earthquake was a 5.9 on the Richter scale and centered just northwest of Richmond about one kilometer underground – a relatively shallow earthquake, which probably contributed to it being felt as far as New York and South Carolina.
So far no major damage has been reported, though several buildings in Washington, DC have been evacuated. Other than a few things falling off shelves, the biggest effect of the earthquake is probably the torrent of jokes that were made on Twitter immediately following, along with an AP tweet not intended to be funny, that confirmed that the inland earthquake would not cause a tsunami wave. Thanks, AP, we were worrying about that one.