Living in California, earthquakes come with the territory. You really do get used to them, after a while become rather expert at guessing how large they are, and how far away. I wouldn’t be writing at 4:39am if not for the latest version of California Rattler.

This little guy woke 3 out of the 5 people sleeping (counting the dog, who slept through it). Sharp jolt, pretty short, like you’d imagine what it would be like if a plane crashed into a house down the block. I make that comparison probably because planes falling out of the sky has been in the news lately, not because it’s anything I ever expect to experience first hand.

I told my wife that I figured it was small and close, but it wasn’t until I looked at the map that I realized just how close. About 1200ft away close! Our own little personal earthquake, just a 3.1 on the Richter scale, located just 4km deep (very shallow, which also accounts for the short duration and “sharpness” of it). Earthquakes further away tend to have a rolling motion to them, so when you get a combination of strong rolling motion and greater duration, you know somebody had a big one, probably a distance away, maybe 25-100 miles away.

A 3.1 is tiny; if you’re on top of it (as we were) yes, you’ll feel it, probably be woken up by the noise it makes. But anything more than a couple miles away and it would be tough to notice. Which means you turn on the radio and nobody’s talking about it (so you go to your iphone, type in “real time earthquake” and up pops the relevant page telling you what you wanted to know).

4:47am now. Need to get back to bed while marveling at the fact that some people get up this early to ride! Crazy. Only reason to be up this early is an earthquake. 🙂