Chicago Weekend Fun!

It is being reported by major news agencies this morning that a 5.2 magnitude earthquake originated from near Salem, IL last night at 4:37 am. Many people here in my office said they woke up last night about that time and felt the small ripples of earthquake shake here in the Chicago area. This is odd for the Midwest. We don’t live near a large active fault like San Andrea’s in California so you don’t think of earthquakes happening here. (just bad winters)

Just this morning at around 10:15 am we felt the floor in the building we work in shaking in an upward bounce type motion. (we work on the 31st floor on Michigan Ave) Everyone stood up from their cubicles and said “what was that?” And one coworker was even compelled to put his fire saftey evacuate team hat on for whatever protective properties that has. We assumed it was another earthquake, and the map with the log of all the US earthquakes proves that it was. I took a screenshot of the map and put it up on flickr to archive it. It says that the red square there on the Southern part of Illinois was an earthquake of 3 magnitude within the last hour today. So, how many more will we get?

I emailed my boyfriend in Naperville and he did not feel it there, but then again he is working in a building that is only 1 story high and you don’t feel as much that way. He remembered that when he lived in California in the 1990’s the people on high floors always felt the earthquakes more than people on the ground. So, this makes sense.

The last Illinois earthquake we had was in 2002 and it was the first one I had ever felt even though I have lived here my entire life. I was woken up in the middle of the night then by being bounced upward off the bed. It was odd and puzzling but not really scary. I live on the 3rd floor of a 3 floor walk up building. So, maybe that is why I slept through this one? It’s just old hat now for us Midwest earthquake veterans.