Earthquake in Las Vegas: Who’d a Thought?!?

Well that was a first.

At 3:40PM today, a 6.9 7.2 earthquake struck Baja California, about 110 miles east-southeast of Tijuana.  The reason I’m blogging about this is because for the first time, I FELT AN EARTHQUAKE IN LAS VEGAS.

I was working in my office when, out of the blue, I started feeling a little dizzy.  A moment later, the dizziness went away.  I kept on working and then started feeling dizzy again.

At this point, I figured I was working too damn hard.  As I left my office and walked into the living room, I happened to be looking out into the backyard and notice the pool water was sloshing back and forth.

“That’s odd”, I thought.

Then, I turned to look at the two chandeliers in our home; one in the dining room and the other in the bar/lounge area.  Both were swinging about 2-3 inches either way.

“I’m not having a stroke!  We had an earthquake!!”

Having grown up in Southern California AND having gone through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, I’m usually not surprised by them.  BUT NOT IN LAS VEGAS!! It was crazy! I had no idea it was an earthquake.

A check on Twitter showed a steady stream of Tweets about the earthquake.  And CNN.com has been covering the earthquake for the last 45 minutes or so.

p.s. The Loma Prieta was a 6.9 (moment magnitude) earthquake as well.  Its “surface-wave magnitude” was 7.1.  Those are some big quakes!