I feel such a FAIL…I didn’t even notice it!!!
It was weird driving through some towns for work to see all the office people just hanging out outside…crazy…
now LA must get 2 feet of snow this winter to return the favor!
They would die if they get that much at once!
I know 
I live within 50 miles of the epicenter and have friends who are within 5. We’re fine, had a bit of a scare but no structural damage as of yet. Friends closer to the epicenter had some damage like glass breaking around the house. I’m just hoping that we don’t have another one (so far I’ve felt the aftershocks as slightly nauseating off-balancing randomness, nothing like the first one)
oh, North Anna. Living where I have (and do), I’ve definitely used power generated from there.
Now I’m just worrying because all of the buildings I am in at work are between 150 and 200 years old, and were obviously not built for earthquakes. Sigh. I realize it’s not as bad as other quakes (I was one of 3 people in the building I was in that knew what to do… thanks, living in a seismically active South American nation!), but it was still quite unsettling.
56 miles away ENE of there. No damage here locally. That was ten long seconds of WTF. I don’t know want to find out what eleven seconds or longer is like, at any magnitude. 
You’re right, I’m sure larger metro area cities have appropriate building codes, but the rest of suburban and rural Virginia is zero earthquake prepared. We’re used to the stray tornado, snowstorm and hurricane. Not this.
CERI has a real time list of events for Central US:
http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/recenteqs/Quakes/quakes0.html
They were the first to list the 4.2 aftershock at 8PM tonight. The USGS updates from CERI. We can’t feel the aftershocks here at all, only find out about them after the fact. Here’s hoping for an aftershock free Wednesday because the east coast has four days to get ready for Hurricane Irene.
5.8 is not a big quake… it only does damage if you live in a country without building codes… say… Iran or China.
the amount of reporting makes it sound like 7.8 or 9.2
See this is the minimizing that’s bothering me. Where I live, there aren’t any kind of earthquake protections in building codes. Many buildings are old masonry - the building I was in during the earthquake was built in the early 1830s. I’ve been in higher magnitude quakes (ahem South America), but this was the one that felt the worst.
But Virginia had a 5.9 in 1897! Those old pre-code buildings already had their practice-shake taken care of. 
people say stuff like that because that is the actual definition of a magnitude 5: “Can cause major damage to poorly constructed buildings over small regions. At most slight damage to well-designed buildings.”
it has an energy attached to it, but that energy level translates to this definition of damages. There is one factor not in this picture, which is the depth of the epicenter. If it is an shallow quake then it does a lot more damage to a small area. Looking at the USGS report, the depth of the Virginia quake is only 6 km, which is very shallow. So if you are close to the epicenter, it could feel worst than a magnitude 7 quake 100km deep.
There has been 2 magnitude 5 earth quake on my island since July, no one barely noticed it. If it gets up to 6, then it might be serious, if it get up to 7 people starts dying, if it get up to 8 or 9, we are talking about an entire area looking like it’s been hit by a nuclear weapon. Because magnitude are measured log scaled, so every 0.2 it goes up, the earth quake doubles in energy.
I missed it because I was in the can the whole time, and didn’t notice.
i thought the splashing would make it more noticeable 
Animals at Smithsonian Zoo reacted to quake.
Got a little rumble in my jungle here in Michigan of all places. Good reason to leave our “evil genius’ lair” for a smoke break with the artists up stairs.
Ha! That’s hilarious
OH THE HUMANITY!!!
My grandfather, following a hurricane in the 1960s that destroyed much of his house but left an unwanted lamp in perfect shape, was doing his inventory for the insurance company. Hefting a brick, he smashed the ugly wedding gift into small pieces, then dutifully recorded it in the notebook as yet another victim of the storm.
I wonder if those buildings would have survived a structural inspection BEFORE the lil’ ground shiver?
I was really sad to read about the damage to the National Cathedral. It’s one of my favorite buildings in D.C.
D.C., Maryland and Virginia never have earthquakes. Most of the east coast never has earthquakes. Most of my colleagues had never felt one before. Also, we all have evacuation drills practiced and ready. Building’s alarms go off, we leave, no questions asked. Most of us laughed off the fear and unsettled feeling and got right back to work. Schools closed until the buildings were inspected, so most people with kids had to go home, and that caused massive traffic snarls. It was not like, “Panic omg must flee city aaaaaah!”
That seems reserved for Irene. “Must flee inland! Aaaaah!!”
This is true. Absolutely true.
More like, “You must flee inland.” Ocean City MD is being evacuated for the first time in decades.