I don’t know if any of you on the East Coast of the United States felt that earlier this afternoon (I felt it here in New York City), but according to the United States Geological Survey, a 5.9-magnitude earthquake just hit Mineral, Virginia, a town 100 miles south of Washington DC, shortly before 2:00 PM EST.
This comes after a rare earthquake last night in Colorado, and the shaking has been reported from Manhattan to South Carolina.
UPDATE 1: USGS wants to know if you felt the quake in your neighborhood.
UPDATE 2: The earthquake’s been ticked up to a 5.9 and is the largest in Virginia since 1897.
UPDATE 3: Offices in Manhattan and Washington have been evacuating and damage to a bridge has been reported in Pennsylvania.
UPDATE 4: As noted by the USGS’s seismic hazard map, the risk for quakes in Virginia is slightly higher than that of nearby areas on America’s East Coast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-y4QQwLWA
UPDATE 5: Here’s footage of a press conference disrupted by the quake. Extensive damage was reported in Mineral, which has a population of approximately 500 residents.
UPDATE 6: Cell providers were inundated with calls, some stones fell off the Washington Cathedral, and safety systems took Virginia nuclear power plants near the epicenter offline.
UPDATE 7: The quake was felt as north as Boston, Montreal, and Toronto. Here comes the inundation of not-so-thrilling YouTube earthquake videos.
UPDATE 8: Things seem to have quieted down for now, but check out our post on the history of earthquakes in Virginia. Also, our sister site Gizmodo is collecting video of the aftermath on buildings along the East Coast.
https://gizmodo.com/how-could-an-earthquake-happen-in-virginia-5833680
https://gizmodo.com/all-the-videos-of-the-east-coast-earthquake-updating-5833659
