Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Well that was fun! We were both asleep when the earthquake stuck just before 1am this morning although we didn't stay asleep for long. The noise was horrendous and given the strength of the wind outside we assumed part of the roof (maybe a ridge tile or two) had been blown off.
So at 1am in dressing gown and slippers we were wondering around the house and garden trying to figure out what made the noise. I can't remember how we came to the conclusion that the only other explanation was an earthquake but checking the BBC news website at about 1:15am confirmed that an earthquake had struck.
Apparently it was a 5.3 magnitude quake with the epicentre near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, which is approximately 60 miles from our house in Sheffield. According to the news it was the biggest quake for almost twenty years. In April 1990 I felt a 5.1 magnitude earthquake when I was in my last year at junior school. That one was during the day and I vividly remember all the books jumping off the shelf onto the floor!
As someone living in New Zealand - a country which experiences about 15,000 earthquakes a year - the first thing one does when one feels a quake is go onto the Geonet website and fill in their report form and see where and how strong it was. If I were in the UK it would probably not occur to me that an earthquake had taken place.
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