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[Roadgeekteen]

I am wondering what a big earthquake feels like. I think that a member from the west coast could answer this.

[bing101]

I'm originally from the Bay Area. I was there for the  1989 Loma Prieta Quake and the 2014 American Canyon Quake. The quake has the feel of a shaker in the 2014 quake and more intense in the 1989 quake. the ground shakes hard though. But I was on Bedrock in both quakes and was on higher ground.  Somehow the houses I lived in at the time managed to stay in place due to how the house was made and that it was in BedRock.


But if you live on Bay Mud on the San Pablo Bay or San Francisco Bay then its 100x worse than what I went through if You are in Mare Island, West Oakland or Marina District of the Bay Area.

[Max Rockatansky]

Most of the time you only notice because of a foundation cracking which makes a loud noise or if you are still enough to notice things moving around.  Most of the San Andreas Fault is in a creep zone which tends to have a lot of 4-5 magnitude earthquakes which great frequency.  That sounds bad but really the damage doesn't get all that significant generally until something 6 or above, places like Palm Springs are due for something in the 7 or 8 magnitude range which will be bad.

[Hurricane Rex]

You can't normally feel a quake until its 3.5 or above, and unless it's a magnitude 7 or above, the shaking normally doesn't last for very long. If you can't feel it but your dog is crazy afterwards that's normal.

[wxfree]

I can't answer your question, but I can tell you about small quakes, the only kind we get in the DFW area.  There have been quite a few 2s and 3s that I never noticed.  I did notice about a 3.1 once.  It felt like someone had slammed a heavy door a few rooms away, just a tiny jolt through the floor.  The bigger impact was the sound, which was like someone dropping a heavy rock onto pavement outside, which is what I'd thought had happened until I realized I barely felt something.  It was late at night and quiet.  If I'd been watching television on the couch I could have easily missed the jolt and sound.

I was in about a 3.4, which I barely noticed as a light shake for a second or two.

My biggest one was a 4.0, which shook for a few seconds and was definitely noticeable.  This one made a bit of a rumbling sound.

[Desert Man]

The largest earthquake I experienced was M7.3 (was considered 7.6 in the older scale) in June 28, 1992 when I was 12 staying with my Dad in his apartment in Desert Hot Springs, 30 miles from the epicenter in Landers. The quake struck before 5am, lasted 90 seconds and I seen cracks form in side buildings, one you can see the inside of a garage! My Mom was in the hospital back then and she's a life-long Californian who doesn't fear earthquakes in part she grew up being told of the "big one" and this wasn't quite it. 

[dvferyance]

Since when is an earthquake weather?

[Hurricane Rex]

Since when is an earthquake weather?

It technically isn't but meteorologists talk about it during their segments instead of the newscasters. Also in college, earthquakes can fall under some meteorology classes.

[Rothman]

Since when is an earthquake weather?

It technically isn't but meteorologists talk about it during their segments instead of the newscasters. Also in college, earthquakes can fall under some meteorology classes.

[citation needed]

[Hurricane Rex]

Since when is an earthquake weather?

It technically isn't but meteorologists talk about it during their segments instead of the newscasters. Also in college, earthquakes can fall under some meteorology classes.

[citation needed]

I cannot cite the first portion of this because I'm going off of local meteorologists and that it is a common topic on the weather channel.

I have a no time right now to cite the second portion because last time I looked into it, I had to dig it out and that took a little time.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Well, even the Japan Meteorological Agency has an earthquake section. As well as a volcano one.

I have never felt an earthquake, even though some have been ocurred in my area.

[bing101]

Well I live near a strike slip fault and apparently they make quakes at a max of 7-8.x in the magnitude.

[triplemultiplex]

The 5.9 I woke up to in Juneau back in 2014 felt like someone was jostling my hotel bed back and forth in a gentle, but persistent attempt to wake me.
The one sound I could hear was a picture swinging back and forth, gently rubbing against the wall.
By the time I processed what was going on, it was over.

If I had been on a lower floor, I'm not sure I would've even woken.  Four stories up, I think there was a little extra kick to that shimmy.

[gonealookin]

I mentioned the 1989 Bay Area earthquake in the severe weather thread, and looking through some older threads saw this one.  At that time I both lived and worked in downtown Hayward in the East Bay, and my commute was a 4 or 5 minute walk, depending on how long I had to wait at the signal to cross CA-238 (Foothill Blvd.).  I was standing there waiting when the quake hit, and was glad not to be indoors because nothing could fall on me.  It's still the only earthquake I've ever felt when I was outdoors (there's much more of a sense of shaking indoors).

The thing I noticed most in that one was the vertical motion.  I could see the cars literally bouncing on their tires on the street.  On an opposite corner there was a gas station with a canopy over the pumps and seeing that thing swaying back and forth rather dramatically was quite memorable.

I had no particular sense of danger, nothing collapsed around me and obviously I had no idea a double-decked freeway was collapsing at that very moment less than 20 miles away.  The electricity didn't go out, and when the light changed and I crossed one of the drivers in a bouncing car yelled at me "HOLY SHIT!".  I nodded and laughed and proceeded on home to watch the World Series.

[bing101]

Anybody remembers these quakes like the 2008 New Madrid Quake or the 2011 Mineral fault quake I heard stuff that the Next Time a 6.9 or above quake hits New Madrid Fault or an earthquake fault in Mineral, Virginia would be 10 times worse than even a 6.9 or above quake on the Hayward fault due to the fact that the quake on the east coast can be felt in multiple states while a west coast quake would be confined to only 1 state closest to the epicenter.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811%E2%80%9312_New_Madrid_earthquakes

[bing101]

https://www.usgs.gov/news/east-vs-west-coast-earthquakes

Here is an article the USGS made when they were talking about the differences between a West Cost quake and an East Coast quake though.

[jeffandnicole]

Prior to the widely-felt Virginia earthquake which had my building swaying in NJ, which felt cool and freaky at the same time, I guess the only other opportunity I would've even had to feel an earthquake was when I was in Hawaii.  After I drove to Volcano National Park one day, I looked at their visible seismograph machine there, and it turned out there was a 3.0 earthquake during our drive.  Never felt it.  During our 3 day stay there, there was approximately a half-dozen earthquakes each day, most of which were under 2.0 and thus was basically a normal day where they weren't even noticed or felt by anyone.

[Rothman]

I've only felt little rumblers, and that's with living right in SF for a while.

Most surprising was feeling one here in upstate NY a few years back.  Some people ran out of the building.

[kendancy66]

Even though I lived in CA for 16 years, I have only noticed 2 episodes of shaking caused by an earthquake.  The longest was the Chino Hills quake (2008? I don't remember date exactly) It seemed like it lasted a long time but was probably only about 15-30 seconds.  I was sitting at my work desk in San Juan Capistrano.

What I remember was having sensations of falling and floating and feeling of helplessness.  I had completely forgotten about defensive maneuvers like going to a door opening or other safe area.

But even that one did not cause any shelf collapses.  My wife experienced shelf damage though because she was at Target at the time at Irvine where I-405 and I-5 meet, was shaken up.  The only long lasting effect on me was the damage done to the I-5 South truck bypass bridge that had a joint separate.