Earthquake!

Did you feel it?!? Huh?!?!

This morning at 5:37, West Salem, Illinois was the epicenter of a 5.2 magnitude earthquake. We live 162 miles to the north-east of West Salem.

We've experienced a tremor here before in 1987, as Carol of May Dreams Gardens recently discussed in a post even, but I didn't feel that one. I was on the back of a hay truck and never even knew it happened, so I felt jipped that everyone else got their first one and I missed it. Silly, huh?

I once lived in Oregon for a time and woke up to a small earthquake. My right foot wouldn't quit shaking and I thought that someone was deliberately shaking my bed. I got mad and told whoever it was to stop and then I realized that there was no person there. I heard the rumble too. It went on for what I thought was a long time, but that could have been just the adrenaline flooding my veins. I was like that Laverne & Shirley episode where they first move to California and experience their first earthquake.

So last night, I was again asleep and dreaming, but this is weird... When the quake started, my dreaming mind recognized it by the shaking and deep rumble. At this point, my dreaming mind became conscious of the quake and set off warning bells inside me, but my body only became alert enough to be able to make a move -if absolutely necessary. Because, after all, one has to sleep, earthquake or not. Isn't that funny? I take my beauty sleep seriously. Heehee! Matt said he knew nothing.

For anyone who's never experienced a quake, the shaking is not like the shaking that occurs when you shake someone or a table leg. You can tell that the shake is whole-scale. And the rumble sounds like a mix between a large dump truck going by (but not fast enough) and a clap of thunder that comes from the belly of the earth that gets extended too long.

Our old love Louisville, Kentucky suffered some minor damage to a building downtown, but that's the only damage I've seen so far. Who else felt it???


UPDATE-- Aftershocks hit at 11:15 a.m., 10:55 a.m., 9:46 a.m., 9:36 a.m.9:15 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. The 11:15 a.m. quake, which had a preliminary magnitude of 4.6, was felt in downtown Indianapolis and across southern Indiana. The others were too small for most people to notice.

High: 75 Low: 52, partly cloudy; Lunar Phase: Waxing Gibbous, 96% of full.