“i feel the earth move under my feet” – earthquake in buffalo, ny

USGS Earthquake Intensity Map - Ontario-Quebec Border Region

If you ask Connie Terwilliger or Amy Snively or Dave Courvoisier or maybe even Jeffrey Kafer, they’ll likely share more than a couple of stories about being in an earthquake.

I’ve never been in one, until today.

Yes our little hamlet (once a thriving metropolis – but that a story for another blog post) Buffalo, NY had an earthquake today. A real live one.

As you can see from the map, we were not near the epicenter but I very clearly felt it at my desk. As I said on a Facebook post today, it felt like “just a constant rumble of a very large truck on a bumpy road for about 7-10 seconds….long enough to make you think it wasn’t just a very large truck on a bumpy road.”

Here there was no damage here from the quake but a heck of a curiosity factor (and maybe even greater respect for their power). There may have been tremors in the region before (I guess there is a fault line in or around Lake Erie) but I don’t think it was so clearly felt by as many people as this one was.

Blizzards we get, high winds we get, hot we get. Earthquakes…not so much. Here’s hoping it’s not a trend for the future.

Here’s what it looked like live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada during a press conference where video was rolling. A little NSFW language from a newser who was clearly a little shocked by the realization of what’s happening. Sorry about the commercial at the beginning.

2 Responses to ““i feel the earth move under my feet” – earthquake in buffalo, ny”

  1. Yeah. Very VERY strange. I’ve never experienced an earthquake either. My first thought as I watched my desk and microphone stand and music stand *jiggle* for a short bit, was, “STOP that!”. I was just taking a brief pause in between recording, and was rather annoyed that when I’d wanted to start back up again, things were MOVING. I didn’t realize what it was until seconds after it actually stopped and I realized that it couldn’t have been a large truck rumbling by. A large truck had never made things *move* like that before. A little freaky to realize that the whole *house* had been moving – even for that short bit of time.

    I’ll be really curious to hear what the scientists say was the cause …

  2. Oh – and yeah. That commercial at the start there? Feel our pain. :-/ 😉