Whole Lotta Shakin'...

Okay, so maybe that title was a little cheesy, but it's fitting nevertheless, since what I'm talking about was this morning's earthquake, which rattled much of the midwest. The quake, which was centered near Evansville, IN, measured in at a magnitude of 5.4 on the Richter Scale here in Louisville at around 5:30 this morning. According to the Richter Scale, an earthquake with that magnitude is approximately equal to the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. I happened to wake up about 5 minutes or so before the quake needing to go the bathroom. After taking care of business, I was lying in bed when I heard what sounded like a loud "bang," followed by a big jolt. Honestly, my first thought was someone had crashed their car into my building, but after the initial jolt, I noticed a slight rumbling that persisted for a while afterwards. It felt like I was lying on one of those vibrating beds, but one whose juice was just on the verge of running out. There was also a second quake later on, around 11:15am, that measured 4.6.

I suppose I should have recognized it as an earthquake right away, but I had just woken up. The only other earthquake I've experienced was back a few years ago, when I was living in Burlington, VT. That quake was pretty similar to this one in size, measuring in at a magnitude of 5.1. It had a different "feel" to it, though, but that could have been because I had been asleep when the Burlington quake hit, whereas this time around I was fully awake for the entire thing.