No, I'm Not Your SF Bay Area Earthquake Expert

Wouldn't you know it? Just yesterday, I was joking with my wife that the one thing about California I'm missing by being in Colorado this week was the potential for an earthquake. Seriously. It always seems the "interesting" earthquakes take place when we're out of town, so the next time we're traveling, we'll be sure to warn you, as this evening the Bay Area was hit with a 5.6 magnitude event, the strongest in nearly 20 years.

How do you think I found about it? I certainly didn't feel it here in Denver. And nobody called to see if we were okay, as anybody who would care already knew we weren't in the danger zone.

I found out because while thumbing through the referrals to my blog on the Blackberry during some downtime, an odd string of searches from Google started popping up: "recent earthquake in silicon valley", "earthquake hits bay area", "was it an earthquake tonight in sf bay area?" and "sf earthquake tonight" for starters...

That of course got me curious. First, it turns out a note from early March (Yet Another Small Earthquake Hits SF Bay Area) is #2 worldwide in Google for "recent earthquake in Silicon Valley" and #1 for "was it an earthquake tonight in sf bay area?". People from around the Web were looking for answers, hoping I could help.

A few clicks later, and I too was finding out the news. I've talked about earthquakes before on the blog, in December 2006 and June 2006, and I actually see them as a unique bit of California, something to be respected but not feared.

We don't get home until late Monday night, but we don't expect anything to be different. The flat-screen TV better be right where we left it, and the house better be in the same level of disarray we saw when we closed the door Sunday. And maybe the next time there's a good-sized earthquake, I'd like to not find out about it from my Web log statistics.

Yet Another Small Earthquake Hits SF Bay Area

Funny... our weather forecast didn't call for an earthquake tonight...

At 8:40, we had a series of sudden side to side jolts, which could be nothing other than an earthquake. Here in the Bay Area, we're used to these things, and it didn't last very long at all.

Like other recent earthquakes, the epicenter appears to have been on the Hayward Fault in the East Bay. Despite the frequency of temblors, the Bay Area has been relatively incident-free for the better part of twenty years.

Early reports have the earthquake at 4.2., stronger than the 3.4s and 3.5s of recent history, but not alarming.

Previous quake-related posts:

12/22/06: A 3.7 Earthquake? Call Me When You Hit 5.0.
6/15/06: Earthquake Shakes Things Up