I grew up in Northwest Tennessee. And if you know anything about that area, you know it sits smack dab on top of the New Madrid seismic zone, home of some of the largest earthquakes in the contiguous US 201 years ago.
Those earthquakes are said to have rang the church bells of Boston. They certainly caused the Mississippi to run backwards and that black blob above known as Reelfoot Lake was formed from those crazy messed up waters.
Fun times.
When I was in the third grade we had the big earthquake scare. Iben Browning claiming that there was a 50% chance that a large ~7.0 magnitude earthquake would hit the area withing the first few days of December, 1990. There was public panic and our school gave us permission to stay home the weekdays of the prediction (the absences only counting against the "I wasn't absent this year!" aspect of the school). I remember being so angry at my father who still made us go to school. Sure I was only three blocks from home (my brother, a grade older, was farther) but who wanted to go to school!? Dad reckoned that if the earthquake hit, then authorities were more likely to hit up schools faster than homes.
Dad and his stupid logic.
So, I was off to school even though many were absent (didn't seem to worry about the quake hitting during the Christmas parade. THAT was ok to go to) and one of my fellow classmates remembers having only three people in her class during that time.
As with predictions of that sort, the earthquake failed to happen and life in the rural area went on as normal.
MY FIRST
You would think, being in a fairly active seismic zone, I would have felt an earthquake early on. Yes, the quakes in the area are small, but there were certainly many times when the people around me would be asking "Did you feel it?!" and sadly, I would say no.
My first earthquake wasn't felt until I neared my 21st year. This may have been a good thing, as I may not have recognized it as one had I not been schooled in the hows and whys of earthquakes.
It was an early morning in June. I was laying in bed, considering getting up to ready for my morning walk with one of my best friends, when suddenly things started to move. My bed just started moving back and forth, from my feet to my head.
"What is going on?" I wondered. My bed was not supposed to move unless I was making it so, and I certainly wasn't doing anything to make it so.
Instantly, logic took over. Why would my bed move in such a way? I started to think of earthquakes and the different movements of the waves. The swaying motion certainly would fit that of the Love waves. And as I learned later that the epicenter was north of us, it certainly makes sense that the motion was the way it was in how my bed is arranged in the room.
Had I not already had my geology training, I may not have put any thought into what I had felt. Maybe I would have realized what it was when I saw the news and it said that it was a 4.5 magnitude quake, but maybe not.
Almost exactly two years later, I felt my second, a 4.0, still someone along the New Madrid, though my personal journal doesn't give any more information than that.
The third, and final, quake I've thus far experienced was the 5.8 Mineral, VA one from 2011. I was still in my early days at App State, using the conference room as an office. That one had me more confused as to whether or not it was a quake because construction stuff was going on in and around the building, so it wasn't until the Twitter-sphere exploded a few seconds after my world stopped shaking that it was confirmed to be an earthquake.
Here's to many more (and as inconspicuous) quakes in the future!
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