Earthquake!!!

It's quite odd for me, not being Californian, to feel the earth move back and forth and up and down. Add to that the fact that I was standing right above a wall we had just built, and you might have an inkling as to what I felt when the earthquake struck this morning.

We heard a rumbling, creaking sound coming from the neighbor's and then the shaking started. I started looking around wondering whether I should actually be on top of a newly built wall, then a jolt hit and my feet started sort of doing little circles while I tried to hold still, like I was standing on a ball or something. Anne said, "You looked like you didn't know where to run." Probably true.

In any case, the wall, our friends and neighbors, our cats--everybody made it through just fine. Pretty extensive testing, I'd say.

Of course, I was on the USGS website in about 2 minutes, so you know I'm going to share some pictures with you.

One of the most interesting is this first one, which is the "intensity map." It's showing that here in Whittier, we felt it at a level VI, which is similar to what they felt a few miles away in Chino and Yorba Linda. Though it's not depicted on the map, it was also interesting here in that the p-wave didn't seem to come from the east, but rather the SW. You never know how the shock waves are going to bounce around.

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p-wave travel times (in min):