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Earthquake shakes Boston (Boston Globe)

I was chatting online with a guy in Middle Island, New York when it hit. There is was 5.9 on the Richter scale. My husband, in New Jersey on the road at the time, also felt it there.

Yikes

We got sent home. Lights fell, a little bit of mild structural damage. It was weird feeling the building sway and the trees sway. We thought the building was under attack!!!

All safe, some of the staff were really frightened, but they will be ok too.

That's Scary

My experience in DC around 2 pm yesterday... a rolling crescendo of harmonic vibrations that peaked enough to topple an empty Styrofoam cup on my cubicle desk, after it danced a small ballerina�s pirouette.
Not as violent as the jolt/sonic boom of a SoCal quake, but the temors reminded me of the West Coast.

I'm amazed at how far and wide the earthquake was felt. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that both me and my family a couple 100 of miles away would feel an earthquake together. Pennsylvania and upstate-NY.

It was even felt out here in Northern Indiana! People in the upper floors of tall buildings felt the buildings swaying. A friend of mine working on the 11th floor of a building on the Notre Dame campus in South Bend said that they started feeling queasy from the motion. I was driving at the time, and the road would have had to split open in front of me for me to notice anything more than the usual road vibrations!

I'm so glad that the damage was very limited! Here in the south, the New Madrid is the most likely fault to act up.

Which fault was this quake associated with?

I was wondering about the fault also. A USGS publication points out that Virginia is in the middle of the North American plate, and that earthquakes in that area are usually caused by deep faults rather than the surface faults like in California. However, there are "seismic zones" in Virginia, and the recent quake is believed to be from the Spotsylvania high-strain zone. Apparently, the area was once an island (millions of years ago)and when the North American plate formed it was pushed tightly against other islands. I never realized how fascinating geology is!