Earthquake!

I've been living in California for over three years now and I've never felt an earthquake. There have been a couple but I've always been somewhere else. Now I come to New Jersey and feel one within days.

It was around 2pm when we got to the beach and set up the deck chairs and umbrella before anointing ourselves with sunscreen and settling down for a quick picnic before going for a swim. As I sat down the chair I noticed it was rocking. M remarked on it as well, and we agreed it was probably just the wind. But the rocking didn't stop, in fact it intensified, before dropping away after about ten seconds.

A minute or so later someone in the group next to us started to talk about a tremor, so M popped over to have a chat. Turns out the wind wasn't that strong; instead a 5.8 quake had hit Virginia and we'd felt it a few hundred miles away. It turns out the plate that makes up part of the East Coast is fairly solid and unbroken, so seismic shock carries further than on the West coast, where the plate is more broken up.

It's my first US earthquake (I've felt one in the UK) and was exciting, and a little worrying. We shall see what the rest of the week brings...