Oklahoma has suddenly become earthquake country, and no one knows why
GUTHRIE, Okla. The shaking came in the dead of the night on a recent Wednesday morning, vibrations so intense that they startled Faye Sayre out of a deep sleep. Her bed was lurching up and down and back and forth and Sayre, in her drowsiness, initially thought it was Gunner, her 180-pound English mastiff puppy, leaping on her mattress as if it were a doggie trampoline.
I thought, Why is my dog jumping in my bed? Sayre recalled. The bed was really rocking. ... And she doesnt do that. Shes not excitable like that. Shes a very calm dog.
But as Sayre sat up to figure out what was happening, she noticed Gunner was sprawled in her usual spot on the floor next to her bed. The dog was looking up at her quizzically, and Sayre suddenly realized it wasnt just her bed that was moving. The entire room was shaking.
Here we go again, Sayre thought.
It was an earthquake one of the more than 150 quakes measured at magnitudes of 2.5 or higher on the Richter scale that have hit Oklahoma in the last month alone.
While most of the quakes have been small compared to the tremors that regularly rock California and other earthquake-prone states, the recent burst of seismic activity has made Oklahoma one of the shakiest states in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
And thats weird in a state better known for its wild springtime weather and where most people, until recently, had never even felt an earthquake, much less considered how to react to one.
Oklahoma is still rebuilding from two of the strongest tornadoes ever recorded, which swept a deadly path through the central part of the state last May. Storms are such a way of life here that people are raised from an early age to cast a wary eye toward the sky. They are experts on all things meteorology from the telling hook echo clouds that precede tornadoes to the way the air feels before a big storm is about to hit because theyve had to be.
But earthquakes? Not so much at least not until recently. Now local libraries have been inundated with requests for books about earthquakes, and residents on shaky ground have loaded their Netflix queues with documentaries about a natural phenomenon that is even more unpredictable than tornadoes all while wondering if the small quakes rumbling the plains mean Oklahoma is on the brink of the big one.
A few years ago, people would have said youre crazy to talk about earthquakes, said David Ball, emergency manager for Logan County and the city of Guthrie, a small town just north of Oklahoma City that has been the epicenter for much of the states recent seismic shifts. They are so regular now that its like, Did we just have an earthquake or is that the wind blowing?
For complete article: http://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-earthquakes-135334009.html
GUTHRIE, Okla. The shaking came in the dead of the night on a recent Wednesday morning, vibrations so intense that they startled Faye Sayre out of a deep sleep. Her bed was lurching up and down and back and forth and Sayre, in her drowsiness, initially thought it was Gunner, her 180-pound English mastiff puppy, leaping on her mattress as if it were a doggie trampoline.
I thought, Why is my dog jumping in my bed? Sayre recalled. The bed was really rocking. ... And she doesnt do that. Shes not excitable like that. Shes a very calm dog.
But as Sayre sat up to figure out what was happening, she noticed Gunner was sprawled in her usual spot on the floor next to her bed. The dog was looking up at her quizzically, and Sayre suddenly realized it wasnt just her bed that was moving. The entire room was shaking.
Here we go again, Sayre thought.
It was an earthquake one of the more than 150 quakes measured at magnitudes of 2.5 or higher on the Richter scale that have hit Oklahoma in the last month alone.
While most of the quakes have been small compared to the tremors that regularly rock California and other earthquake-prone states, the recent burst of seismic activity has made Oklahoma one of the shakiest states in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
And thats weird in a state better known for its wild springtime weather and where most people, until recently, had never even felt an earthquake, much less considered how to react to one.
Oklahoma is still rebuilding from two of the strongest tornadoes ever recorded, which swept a deadly path through the central part of the state last May. Storms are such a way of life here that people are raised from an early age to cast a wary eye toward the sky. They are experts on all things meteorology from the telling hook echo clouds that precede tornadoes to the way the air feels before a big storm is about to hit because theyve had to be.
But earthquakes? Not so much at least not until recently. Now local libraries have been inundated with requests for books about earthquakes, and residents on shaky ground have loaded their Netflix queues with documentaries about a natural phenomenon that is even more unpredictable than tornadoes all while wondering if the small quakes rumbling the plains mean Oklahoma is on the brink of the big one.
A few years ago, people would have said youre crazy to talk about earthquakes, said David Ball, emergency manager for Logan County and the city of Guthrie, a small town just north of Oklahoma City that has been the epicenter for much of the states recent seismic shifts. They are so regular now that its like, Did we just have an earthquake or is that the wind blowing?
For complete article: http://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-earthquakes-135334009.html
