6 Miles

Yesterday morning, at about 5:30 am, there was an earthquake about 125 miles south of us, just over the boarder in IL.

James was woken up by the rattling of the doors and thought one of the boys was making the noise, banging on our door. He got up (the shaking had stopped by then) and didn't see anyone and assumed, since we had our windows open, it was a wind gust. 

He said I said "What was that?" but I don't remember–I slept through the first quake in 40 years!  I did get up with the boys and when I turned on the radio found out about it. (I resisted the urge to wake James up to say "We had an earthquake!"). It was quite the topic of conversation all day–and with no one getting hurt, a fun topic.  It ended up being a 5.2 quake and appears to be on a small fault line that runs along the Wabash River valley, a branch of the the New Madrid Fault line. I discovered last night on the news NO ONE pronounces that like the city in Spain. We have to slaughter it, like all other names in Indiana–don't get me started on Galvaston or Alexandria! According to the paper, it is pronounced "New MAD rid following Midwesterner's penchant for borrowing European names and tweaking the pronunciation."  It was felt as far away as Chicago an Alanta! I've yet to hear from our family in the Chicago area to hear if they felt it, but my sister in St. Louis said she did.

James also felt the biggest aftershock. At about 11:15 there was a 4.6 one and he could feel it upstairs in his office. I was home with Alex and we didn't notice anything.  Dang it!