The Earth Moved…
February 27, 2008 by katesaltfleet
HTB and I were shaken out of our slumber at about 1am this morning by the shaking of an earthquake. I knew what it was, as I have felt them before when I lived in Guadeloupe, but HTB had never felt anything like it. He was a bit freaked that there might be a tsunami or something following it. Normally it is me who has the recurring dreams that the Humber is going to surge up the street and engulf us. We don’t get many earthquakes here in the UK. It was quite strong, at least as strong as the ones I’d felt in the Caribbean. I went to sleep wondering where the epicentre was, like the geek that I am.
When I awoke this morning, the first thing I did was check out the news, and bingo, the epicentre was in Market Rasen, about 30 miles down the road. Amazing, Market Rasen making the national news! The only other claim to fame this little town has is being immortalised in Elton John’s “Saturday night’s all right for fighting”.
Apparently the earthquake measured 5.3 and and was the biggest earthquake that the UK has felt in 25 years. It was the noisiest I’ve ever experienced.
One thing that wasn’t explained in the BBC report was the flash of light that came a few minutes after the earthquake. I definitely saw it, and the thought that this could be the end of the world (or at least the end of me) crossed my mind briefly. I wasn’t scared though, just oddly peaceful. HTB and I held each other close and went back to sleep.
Stumble It!
I heard about this on the news this morning. When we lived in wellington in NZ, straddled across 2 huge fault lines, it was quite normal to wake every morning to large tremors for about a week at a time with occasional really large tremors. I wasn’t a great fan of them at all. Everyone used to come into work in a funny mood on earthquake days, they always seemed to happen about 6am while you were half asleep!
Do you think global warming has contributed largely to this quake? I cant believe I slept through the quake but already finding the whole ordeal really interesting.
@ Halfpintpixie - That’s true, it’s a big deal here but fairly commonplace in other parts of the world. I remember having to do earthquake drills when I was teaching in Guadeloupe!
@Laurablood - I don’t think global warming has anything to do with earthquakes, it’s to do with the movement of the earth’s crust. It’s far hotter in the centre of the earth!