Early this morning, a little after 4 am, we heard a loud boom and the house shook. After looking around inside and out we didn't see anything, and so went back to sleep.

This morning, DH found out that it was an earthquake! A little one, but still we can hardly believe that that is what we heard and felt.

http://www.roanoke.com/news/breaking/wb/205002

"You felt the earth move under your feet"

SWOhio hasn't had an earthquake in awhile?

Sally, I don't know if Salem, Virginia has ever had an earthquake before.

I feel the earth move under my feet.
I feel the sky start tumblin' (?)

I used to know the words to that song.

Link to this morning's event http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/...ehnw0516a.html

A link to a Wikipedia page of previous earthquakes in Virginia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_seismic_zone

We had an earthquake here in GA a few years back. It was around the same time, too.....very early A.M.. It was the talk of all the radio shows and local news because so many people heard and felt it. It woke me up and it was very unsettling until we found out exactly what it was. One man called into a radio station and said "that's the most action my bed has had for years!".

Probably a good thing you didn't know what it was at the time, maryann. You certainly wouldn't have been able to go back to sleep then. Glad it didn't do any damage.

Hiya Maryann,

Earthquakes can happen nearly anywhere... the big ones are near or on the fault lines ... the little ones are sometimes echos of deeper ones nearer a fault line ...

As for Virginia... years ago when I lived in Hampton Roads, Newport News to be exact, there was a very minor shake. Most people didn't know it and found out on the local news that night

Niko

We had a little one years ago. I felt something, but didn't realize that's what it was until I heard it on the news. Like everyone else, I thought it was just blasting at the quarry.

Personally, in that area, you ought worry more about the blasting.

I've felt tremors before. The weird thing was, they were from earthquakes that were happening on the coasts (The east and west coasts of the U.S.) I live in Nebraska.

One was an earthquake that happened in either North or South Carolina in the late 1980s. I was at the local mall here in Omaha. Sitting on a seat. I felt a tremor in the square bench I was sitting on. My friends that were with me felt it also, and we were wondering what it was. When we got home, we found out that there had been an earthquake in one of the Carolina's.

The other one happened in 1989. The Loma Prieta earthquake in San Franscisco. I was working in a McDonald's here in Omaha, and was on break out in the lobby. We had these benches that were attached to the wall of the building, it went down that entire wall, and had plate glass windows behind it, and there was a line of tables that went the length of the wall.

I was sitting there, eating my Big Mac, and all of a sudden the bench was wobbling. There was just me, one customer and my boss sitting on that bench at the time. I remember feeling the shaking, and looking up at my boss and that customer, and we were all like "what is that, making the bench shake??". Our store had tv's on the wall, but I cant remember if the tv was on, or if it was the store radio, but we heard the announcement about the earthquake in San Francisco at about the same time as we felt the shaking of the bench. I was all excited that I'd felt it and could actually connect the time to an earthquake somewhere else.

Both times I felt the shaking like that, was weird. It was just enough shaking that I could feel it...the one in 1989 was a lot stronger than the first time I'd felt anything like that tho. But it wasnt anything more than the bench vibrating for several seconds.

We had an earthquake here in Nebraska in the mid-90s. It was along the Humboldt Fault and I think it was a 2.0 or close to a 3.0. I cant remember exactly what year it was tho. I did feel that one. It knocked over a stack of videotapes that I had on my tv stand. (tall stack of tapes. Think I had 10 to 15 tapes stacked on top of each other)

Blasting, huh? Maybe those are the strange sounds during the day that we can't identify!

I love deer, but I wish someone would come along and blast some of these blasted deer that come out of our woods and feast on nearly everything. There have been times when I've counted 15 of them. I send Montana out to slaver and bark at them and sometimes they scatter, but mostly they just stand there and look at him.