06 March 2006

The original earth mover

I just experienced my first in-the-waking-hours earthquake, bringing home the fact that I am now living on an active plate boundary. There are stories of an earthquake a few years ago in the Boston area but it happened at night so I didn't feel a thing. Here today it's been windy since morning so the top-floor location of my office has been swaying gently already. When the motion made the floor feel like it was rolling I almost thought it was more of the same until someone on the other side of the room shouted, "meira!" (more!) as the jelly-building feeling subsided.

The word now is that it was a 4.6 only a few kilometers away from here at Krísuvík. While I was looking for the information (Reported conveniently on the Morgunblaðið website) I found the map showing recent earthquake activity in Iceland. As expected it follows the plate boundary down the center of the country, but what I hadn't realized was how much it's going on- there are earthquakes daily, although many are in uninhabited areas. I learned all about this in geology class but it's a different thing to be living on top of the activity that's sending Iceland towards California on the geologic conveyor-belt.

No comments: