I have felt and heard many P waves before the S waves. The Loma Prieta earthquake P wave made the adjacent building sound like it had been hit by a big truck, and then the shaking started. In the redwood forests the aftershocks would start with all of the trees giving a “sigh”, and then the shaking started.
7 Likes
George Carlin would be proud @SeamusBellamy!
About ten years or so ago, there was a tiny earthquake - I think a three - somewhere around Boulder. A friend up there was talking about how all of his co-workers were doing a post-game analysis. We were discussing little quakes later, and I told him I’d felt the long-distance tremors from some BIG quakes, and at the time, they felt like sonic booms. However, I told him about the time I had been working in the yard on a Sunday afternoon, came indoors and took a half-hour nap. I woke up and walked a yard into my kitchen through my open bedroom door, and I had a sense that something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. After standing there for a few seconds, I realized my unbelievably massive pot rack had pulled out of the ceiling and scattered at least a hundred pounds of stainless steel pots, skillets, and lids all over the floor. And I had slept right through it. If I can sleep through the acoustic equivalent of the cymbal section of a marching band crashing through my kitchen, I think I’m the person least likely to feel a minor quake.
If i were taking a nap on the floor of that cat cafe, the headline would have included, “…and the napper slept right through it.”
5 Likes
Kitties are good at picking up vibes.
9 Likes
Generally, animals of many kinds are vastly more sensitive than we give them credit for. It’s hard for us to imagine b/c it’s not our reality, but nevertheless true despite our own dimwitted-ness.
2 Likes
My cat inexplicably went apeshit one night, was just at her wit’s end. I joked to my roommate that maybe the Big One was coming.
5:30 that morning, the Northridge earthquake hit. It was 30 or more miles from us, but still packed enough energy to hit the house as if a car had run into it.
6 Likes
Oh, so that’s what the “p” in p-waves stands for. Pussy cat waves.
1 Like
Based on my completely non scientific observation of having cats for 15 years of the 21 I’ve lived in Japan, they do not feel earthquakes of any size coming in any way that people can tell.
Does that mean that any cat that is over fifty pounds is a dog?
2 Likes
Everyone is missing the most glaring thing that stands out in this article.
A Cat Cafe
3 Likes
Maybe they serve chocolate mouse.
10 Likes
A few years ago, over a Labor Day weekend, I took a southward roadtrip (unusual for me). Blytheville, Arkansas, a short way south of the Missouri bootheel, thoroughly creeped me out. I wasted no time heading north into Missouri and making my way across the first bridge back to Tennessee. I wound up staying the night in Dyersburg.
Overall, I was rather disappointed by the Lower Mississippi River; it’s basically been turned into a ditch between giant levees, in the midst of a vast, flat plain. The Upper Mississippi (upstream of St. Louis) is much more scenic.
As for earthquakes, there are two that stick in my mind: the 1987 magnitude 5 quake centered near Lawrenceville, IL, and the 2010 3.8 quake near Sycamore, IL. I was living in Champaign in 1987, and felt the floor shake in my third-floor apartment. I thought it was from construction activity at first, but then I realized that no, this was actually an earthquake. A friend of mine from California didn’t even notice it.
I’m in the Chicago area now, and the 2010 quake shook my house, waking me up at about 4 AM, in the midst of a snowstorm. I thought it was storm winds, but it soon was clear that this was a tremor rather than wind.
2 Likes
yeah, the lower mississippi river is kind of depressing. if you think arkansas is creepy, let’s just say that the state of mississippi, and rural louisiana, have got that beat. yikes, those places… tennessee and kentucky are gorgeous.
where were you during the 1989-1990 earthquake stuff along the New Madrid fault?
1 Like
The actual tremor IS sound. Just a very loud one.
2 Likes
Last few decent earthquakes here in Shaky City, the cats were all “WTF?! You primates are supposed to keep the ground steady! You had just one job!!”
3 Likes
I was back in Chicagoland for the '90 New Madrid quake, but I didn’t notice it. It’s almost a certainty that I was on a commuter train at the time (8:19 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 26).
2 Likes
Earthquake waves propagate in two forms. The fast P-waves, and the slower S-waves.
Cats (and other animals) can sense these P-waves, while people cannot.
We only feel the S waves, which also bring the destructiveness of earthquakes.
Early warning systems for earthquakes are designed to register P-waves, for examples, giving us a few minutes to evacuate.
This is no longer a mystery, but has a logical scientific explanation.
1 Like
