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M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

earthquake.usgs.gov

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Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#341

Post by stonks »

blitzkrieg3 wrote: post #211
_sword wrote: post #9

That was eerie! I felt my apartment building start to rock and sway as the walls were creaking. Not something I’m used to as a NY native, and not something I loved to experience 20+ floors above the ground.

On the 37th floor of my office buildin I didn't even feel it. Others said they thought it was the wind. Tuned mass dampers are no joke.

On the 38th floor in Hell's Kitchen, I felt my chair and desk shake. It was like 10 seconds long.

One of my neighbours often close their doors with force which causes the wall to vibrate. Then I noticed things not attached to the walls also were shaking and understood it's an earthquake. I also noticed lots of birds flying near the Hudson River. I have never thought I would feel an earthquake here.

I also searched Google to see if there's an earthquake, and at 10:23am nothing was showing up. I remember a year ago Google used to ask "Have you felt your building start shaking", and nothing this time.

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#342

Post by JohnMakin »

0xffff2 wrote: post #315
bee_rider wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought California had a lot of Earthquakes. Oregon is full of volcanoes and about to slip off the continental shelf, right? But I guess those surprises just exists in potential form.

I have lived in California for something like 33 of my 36 years. I have actually felt a grand total of 3 earthquakes in my entire life. Even out here, quakes big enough to shift the wall decorations across a large portion of the state are vanishingly rare.

Uh... This is incorrect, and probably largely dependent on where exactly you live. Just go look at an earthquake swarm map of CA. Near the fault in Los Angeles have been dozens if not more of small/midsized/large quakes that could produce the effects you're talking about. I had one in my office just the other week that freaked everyone out.

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#343

Post by dietrichepp »

puzzledobserver wrote: post #338
q1w2 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know if there's a real-time feed of Earthquakes somewhere? The USGS website doesn't post the Earthquakes until 10-15 minutes after it's over - which nullifies any type of automated warning for our data centers.

Curious: Why might data centers need earthquake warnings, and how might they prepare if given a few minutes or seconds of heads up?

I can think of some ideas: parking the heads on hard drives is one.

Magnetic hard drives are sensitive to vibration. You can shout at hard drives and measure the effects (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4).

One of the worst-case scenarios is a head crash. A head crash will damage the media and may result in data loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash

My guess is that earthquakes powerful enough to cause a head crash are powerful enough for widespread destruction anyway, but I’m no expert. I did some quick searches for hard drives damaged by earthquake, and the only results I got were scenarios where the hard drives or the whole rack got knocked over by the earthquake and hit the floor.

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#344

Post by JumpCrisscross »

filoleg wrote: post #299
bee_rider wrote: post #207

If any west-coasters are confused as to how this is news: the Northeast is sort of geologically unusual for the US in that we have almost no surprising, sudden weather thingies. No tornados, mild thunderstorm, occasional hurricanes (but they are usually weakened a bit compared to, like, Florida by the time they get up here and they’ve spent a long time going up the coast so they tend to be well tracked by forecasters…

I cannot speak for California, but in PNW there is even less “surprising, sudden weather thingies.” Rain is not pouring, unlike on east coast (speaking from my expeirences in both NYC and Atlanta), it is just drizzling at a very low rate. It doesnt thunderstorm. I’ve heard thunder iirc only 2-3 times in my 7 years living there. No tornados or tsunamis. No massive blizzards out of nowhere. I felt this earthquake in NY…

> in PNW there is even less “surprising, sudden weather thingies.”

I'd put the constant wildfires in the weather thing bucket.

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#345

Post by mannykannot »

spopejoy wrote: post #53

I'm in Brooklyn and felt it while on a call with an NJ resident who was the first to say "are we having an earthquake??" Do earthquakes have a propagation speed? Might she have felt it before me?

Three and a half hours later, a collective yawn from the west coast passed over the epicenter.

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#346

Post by dredmorbius »

manojlds wrote: post #236
bee_rider wrote: post #207

If any west-coasters are confused as to how this is news: the Northeast is sort of geologically unusual for the US in that we have almost no surprising, sudden weather thingies. No tornados, mild thunderstorm, occasional hurricanes (but they are usually weakened a bit compared to, like, Florida by the time they get up here and they’ve spent a long time going up the coast so they tend to be well tracked by forecasters…

I am very confused with you classifying earthquakes under "weather thingies"

Natural phenomena, extending beyond what's strictly weather, often get lumped into "meteorology", including earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. One fairly well-known case is the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), whose remit includes not just weather by hydrology, seismology, and volcanology.

Generally: concerns of an extra-human, non-biological origin. E.g., JMA doesn't address pandemics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency>

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#347

Post by nwiswell »

dietrichepp wrote: post #343
puzzledobserver wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: Why might data centers need earthquake warnings, and how might they prepare if given a few minutes or seconds of heads up?

I can think of some ideas: parking the heads on hard drives is one. Magnetic hard drives are sensitive to vibration. You can shout at hard drives and measure the effects (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4 ). One of the worst-case scenarios is a head crash. A head crash will damage the media and may result in data loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash My guess is that earthquakes powerful eno…

Some other thoughts:

- Personnel-level warning to immediately rerack servers, close racks, and get off ladders and away from fall hazards

- Proactively spin up generators to reduce failover in the more-likely event of a power disruption

- Potentially temporarily shut off very large circulation fans so that blades don't collide with the housings

- Potentially stop and carefully restart cooling water loops, in case there's a rupture in the system somewhere

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#348

Post by joecool1029 »

cossatot wrote: post #309
joecool1029 wrote: post #262

So since I live near epicenter, there's one thing that changed geographically very recently. Nearby round valley reservoir was being worked on for years, last fall they got the authorization to pump it back to full and it was told it might take years. Rainy asf winter though so it's pumped back almost full from already 66% to 92% now. I'm wondering if billions of gallons of water getting added nearby affected pressur…

It's possible. Seismicity has been associated with reservoirs[1] (the most well known is probably an earthquake in Egypt following the construction of the Aswan High Dam) and even rainfall[2]. There are both potential triggers from the increase in the stress on the fault, as you state, due to the weight of the water; and (probably more important) the increase in pore fluid pressure along the fault. It's a bit complic…

Good shit, this is the kind of answer I hoped for posting on HN. I don't know too much about earthquake seismology, but I am curious and know where to pull random data.

So I thought, if the ground is moving the aquifer levels might change (no clue whether they would go up or down). I just pulled the ground water levels for Readington Township's well (in which whitehouse station is a place). Sure enough can clearly see when the earthquake hit: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/4035170744525...

So is this expected? Is this a thing that normally happens with earthquakes?

EDIT: Japan paper was cool https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... apparently they measure increased seismicity at times of high inflow. Also just had a big aftershock approx 22:00UTC. sounded like a bomb (I am in whitehouse station now)

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#349

Post by joecool1029 »

q1w2 wrote: post #333
joecool1029 wrote: post #262

So since I live near epicenter, there's one thing that changed geographically very recently. Nearby round valley reservoir was being worked on for years, last fall they got the authorization to pump it back to full and it was told it might take years. Rainy asf winter though so it's pumped back almost full from already 66% to 92% now. I'm wondering if billions of gallons of water getting added nearby affected pressur…

Does anyone know if there's a real-time feed of Earthquakes somewhere? The USGS website doesn't post the Earthquakes until 10-15 minutes after it's over - which nullifies any type of automated warning for our data centers.

Need realtime seismographs, my friend's dad has one he built as a hobby up in quebec city that picked it up: https://alainmichaud.ca/

Re: M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake

#350

Post by mvgoogler »

mtreis86 wrote: post #231
bee_rider wrote: post #207

If any west-coasters are confused as to how this is news: the Northeast is sort of geologically unusual for the US in that we have almost no surprising, sudden weather thingies. No tornados, mild thunderstorm, occasional hurricanes (but they are usually weakened a bit compared to, like, Florida by the time they get up here and they’ve spent a long time going up the coast so they tend to be well tracked by forecasters…

We're also on a shelf of hard rock, so a quake in NJ is felt by all of New England. Keys on the wall were shaking here 100mi away.

I felt it in Boston, albeit very faintly
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