Posted on 05/10/2025 6:34:08 AM PDT by Grey182
I lived in Greenback several years ago...Niles Ferry Rd...
I lived in Greenback several years ago...Niles Ferry Rd...
They are saying 4.1 and that’s pretty strong for these mountains. We have a lot of small ones that just sound like thunder, but this one was bad. I’m only 34 miles from the epicenter in Greenback.
Hubby and I didn’t feel it but our kids did. We’re all about 40 mi north of Atlanta. I was probably running my milking machine at the time which may be I didn’t notice.
Felt in the North Carolina mountains.
“”Would be hardly noticeable in California.””
I was hesitant to believe what I was hearing was an earthquake. Went through a number of them in CA in 50 years to recognize PERHAPS that’s what I was experiencing. If it hadn’t been for the bifold doors in the room where my computer desk is, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it...I decided the noise had to be coming from those BUT WHY? Earthquake - No - can’t be!
I hated the ones in the night in CA as you never knew if it was a real earthquake or if you’d been dreaming. If the shower doors were rattling and making noise, then we KNEW!! If we were downstairs and the kitchen ceiling light was swaying back and forth - then we knew! Lucky enough to have never been in any of the BIG CA ones - Northridge or Oakland/San Francisco!
I got a chuckle out of that.
Edited: *my GOAT milking machine
Yes, small earthquakes feel like a nearby train, or low commercial jet passing overhead. Disconcerting sometimes as your body reacts to a ground movement your eyes and brain don’t “feel.”
This is a 1985 - 2025 “search” of the TN-North GA region from the USGS database. Many more earthquakes (3000+) than I expected.
Like this one, most concentrated on the Lookout Mountain and the TN river valleys just west of Chattanooga TN going southwest towards northern AL.
I've lived in both CA and AK, so know earthquakes well. This was different as you noted. I called it a “jiggle”.
Out west, particularly in California and Alaska where the faults zones are both numerous, frequent and close together, any single movement from a small earthquake does not “cross” the fault lines, and so the earthquake cannot be felt very far away.
Back east, the rock is very near unbroken over hundreds of miles (300 - 600 miles between fault zones.) So even a small earthquake is felt and is heard over much greater distances.
The earthquakes associated with the New Madrid fault (the big 8.1 + earthquakes in the early 1800’s) are further west.
When earthquakes hit that I can actually feel, I always wonder if it’s “The Big One” that we are warned about constantly - and in the Los Angeles Area (and San Francisco too where I have family) we have had Big Ones, very destructive ones. The larger ones sound like a freight train is coming. I well remember the Northridge earthquake, I pass a freeway overpass named for a motorcycle officer who was sadly killed when an earthquake collapsed the old overpass.
We’ve had a series of minor earthquakes recently - I didn’t feel any of them, as I usually do - but noticed all of my photos and pictures on the walls are crooked, so something shook the house.
We are also prepared with water, emergency flashlights, a crank radio, food and more stored in the garage. You never know.
“”We are also prepared with water, emergency flashlights, a crank radio, food and more stored in the garage. You never know.””
I remember being prepared like that when we lived in CA - rabidly so. We brought everything with us when we moved but found we didn’t have any use for it in GA. What would we do with it? With the tornadoes and hurricanes that hit here, it would all be useless...My father in law had so much stuff prepared in case of tidal waves from storms at Mission Beach, CA we laughed at him as he wouldn’t have been able to lift the box he kept everything in. He would have been better off putting a boat in his garage with everything packed in it..
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