Winchester “hit” by earthquake

I wonder whether Vinny reads my blog? Vinny, if you’re reading this, I’m about to mock the Guardian for an article they’ve published. Feel free to wade in 🙂

An article in the Guardian today has the headline, Winchester hit by earthquake of 2.9 magnitude. My heart goes out to the people of Hampshire. It must have been a harrowing experience and I’m sure there’s some work to do:

At the bottom of the article is a quote from a police spokesman, “If we find out what it was, we’ll let you know.” Maybe it was Kim Dotcom. Has he moved to Winchester? Ok, I realise it’s a bit mean of me to make fun of someone’s size but I only thought to do it because Kim Dotcom does it himself:

There was 7.0 magnitude earthquake in New Zealand. I hope nobody was hurt. I didn't feel anything. It wasn't me 😦

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) July 3, 2012

Places don’t get “hit” by 2.9 magnitude earthquakes. It’s like saying “ant stamped on human foot”. More appropriate would be something like “minor shake takes people on Winchester by surprise” or “tiny earthquake felt in Winchester” but perhaps these don’t sound quite as exciting.

New Zealand is “hit” by magnitude 2-3 earthquakes every single day and they never make headline news. Here’s a list of quakes in New Zealand in the past 24 hours taken from the GeoNet website.

If anything though, the Guardian article is very reassuring for me because earthquakes must be very rare indeed if they feel the need to put a 2.9 quake on the front page.

Posted

January 28, 2015

Earthquakes

Rachel M

Tags:

earthquake, earthquakes, geonet, New Zealand, Winchester

Comments

35 responses to “Winchester “hit” by earthquake”

scifihammy

January 28, 2015

Hilarious account! 🙂 Yep, must be a very safe place to live if 2.9 makes the headlines! Loved the garden chair 🙂

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  Yeah, the garden chair is good. It did the rounds after the Auckland quake which from memory was about 3.4 🙂
  
  Reply
  1. scifihammy
    
    January 28, 2015
    
    haha so just a bit of a shake then 🙂
J H Gurney

January 28, 2015

Being from Hampshire & having an interest in seismology ever since the Christchurch earthquake I can see your point. However the UK, though hit by about 10 M2-3 quakes each year, very rarely has earthquakes of such size in the south of the country. Apparently last night’s earthquake was the largest to strike Hampshire since 1982, and it’s occurrence beneath one of the most ancient cities of our country is incredibly special.

In truth the quake was a tiddler. But by the standards of the south coast of England this was a once-a-decade event. It’s occurrence really shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise; Winchester lies on the banks of the River Itchen, a chalk river formed by a fault in the 100 million year old Chalk. Similar kinds of quakes (though probably not caused by chalk river faults) have struck Chichester in the past, one a few centuries back actually causing some minor damage – a quake by British standards equivalent to say the Seddon earthquakes of 2013.

There will be another quake of similar size this year somewhere in the UK, likely in the mining Midlands or Highland Scotland. Only a Midlands quake (like the Derby quake in November – M2.6) could rival yesterday’s Winchester quake.

J H Gurney
Undergrad at University of Plymouth & founder of United Kingdom Earthquake Bulletin

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  Thanks for your great comment, JHG. I agree that this is an unusual event and newsworthy but the headline is a bit silly and the article itself a bit empty of content. What you’ve written in your comment is the kind of thing they could have put in the article.
  
  Reply
  1. J H Gurney
    
    January 28, 2015
    
    Headlines for earthquakes in this country are often laughable. In all honesty the media and seismology have never gone hand-in-hand and it has led to some rather amusing incidents – the Wilberforce quake for example on the 6th January this year apparently struck Christchurch according to the BBC!! Typical failure by British media to be accurate towards science. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30692120
  2. Rachel M
    
    January 28, 2015
    
    Oh that’s a terrible headline too. I can’t believe I missed it! Although I did know about the recent shake at Arthur’s Pass. I still have the geonet app on my phone and it informs me of all quakes over 4.0 in NZ.
JulieD

January 28, 2015

I was going to send you the link for this but obviously major headlines in the UK…

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  Haha, did it make the news in New Zealand too?
  
  Reply
anniegoldfisher

January 28, 2015

Kim Dotcom farted…in Winchester?

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  I think it’s probably more likely that he fell out of bed.
  
  Reply
GrahamInHats

January 28, 2015

Rare indeed and I believe Aberdeen is on very solid granite and if bagpipes can’t shift it then I don’t think anything will. Safe. 🙂

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  That’s very reassuring 🙂
  
  Reply
Andrew Dodds

January 28, 2015

My word, that was only 60 miles away. The kids playroom is a scene of utter devastation.

Once survived a 2.1 in Stoke on Trent that was only 1 mile away. We actually heard that one..

Reasons to live in the UK.. The Climate won’t kill you (unless you really try). The Geology won’t kill you. The Wildlife won’t kill you. As long as you can survive 3 months of continuous drizzle without succumbing to terminal ennui, nature is generally pacified..

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  If anyone in the family is traumatised by the shake then I recommend starting a blog as a way of dealing with it 🙂
  
  Reply
Denise

January 28, 2015

Bit like today on Radio 4 (!) they had a full interview with a health researcher who said that in their study, shopping vouchers *in conjunction with* traditional treatments had a better success rate than traditional treatments alone for stopping smoking in pregnancy… and then the summary headline was “shopping vouchers *instead of* traditional treatments”! Anything for a good headline, never mind the accuracy.

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  That’s bad. I remember reading about that study and I’m pleased to see it helps. It’s definitely worthwhile continuing if it stops women smoking during pregnancy. But it would be unwise to discontinue the usual treatments as well.
  
  Reply
BBD

January 28, 2015

Well, I live in Winchester, and I can’t say I noticed anything. My wife works close to King’s Worthy and no damage noted there nor even mentioned at her workplace. Your blog is the first I’ve hear of it.

The garden chair poster is almost perfect – but for maximum satiric effect the furniture would have to be teak, not plastic…

🙂

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 28, 2015
  
  Your blog is the first I’ve hear of it.
  
  What, you mean you don’t read the Guardian? What would Vinny say?
  
  Reply
  1. BBD
    
    January 28, 2015
    
    Update:
    
    My son’s friend at school says that a vase (prolly Ming) in their house (in King’s Worthy) fell over and broke. So it *was* a proper disaster after all. The Graun is vindicated!
  2. Rachel M
    
    January 29, 2015
    
    Not a ming vase! My heart bleeds.
Catmando

January 28, 2015

Prepare for more headlines. Just sat through a tremor here in Peterborough at about 10.30.

I suspect a NZ seismograph looks scarier than the one I linked to.

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 29, 2015
  
  There’s nothing about it in the Guardian but BBC news has East Midlands tremor recorded at 3.8 in magnitude. That’s a more appropriate headline. I’ll wait to see what the Guardian comes out with.
  
  Here’s the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake:
  
  Reply
Artemisia

January 29, 2015

I saw that – so funny! My favourite headline was the Daily Mail: “Earthquake in HAMPSHIRE! Winchester hit by 2.9 magnitude tremor that ‘felt like an explosion’” Talk about sensationalism 🙂

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 29, 2015
  
  I thought about you when I saw this headline. You made a narrow escape there!
  
  Reply
BBD

January 29, 2015

Update:

From page 2 (no less) of the county journal of record, the Hampshire Chronicle:

Police lines jammed as earthquake strikes

Homes rocked by 2.9 Richter scale tremor

An earthquake shook homes in Kings Worthy and surrounding areas, rocking homes and sparking a hectic night for emergency services.

[…]

Police were inundated with calls from residents fearing the thunderous sonic boom-like sound and powerful vibrations were caused by a major disaster.

A police helicopter was sent out, fire engines were dispatched, and emergency services contacted the military and aviation services, fearing the worst.

No serious damage was caused or anyone injured.

The bathos is good for a giggle, but snark aside the response makes perfect sense. The skies are busy with commercial air traffic from Southhampton airport and there is a large AAC base at Nether Wallop. If I’d actually noticed the quake, my first thought would have been air crash. My second would have been the oil terminal at Micheldever.

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 29, 2015
  
  Ok, when you put it like that I guess it makes sense for people to be concerned. I’m surprised so many people felt a 2.9 though. Christchurch has had over 10,000 aftershocks since the September 4, 2010 quake and most of them go unnoticed. I don’t think I ever noticed one that small.
  
  Reply
  1. BBD
    
    January 29, 2015
    
    I’m surprised so many people felt a 2.9 though.
    
    It’s very quiet in King’s Worthy 🙂
    
    I’ve not heard of anyone in Winchester (yet, at least) who felt/heard the shock. KW is about 2 miles out of town.
Sherri

January 29, 2015

That’s just crazy…but as you say, you can be very reassured by that piece of news indeed Rachel 🙂

Reply
Secular Vegan

January 29, 2015

The strongest local-ish earthquake that I have felt, 4.7 on the Richter scale, had its epicentre in Dudley, about 30-odd miles from where I then lived, in Sep 2002. I remember waking up at about 1 am to the house shaking, going to the loo and then falling asleep again almost as soon as I hit the sack; it was as if had been part of a dream. There was one of 4.2 centred on Warwick almost exactly two years before, but although it was at about 5.30 am I was already awake when the house shook. The only other time I have felt one was several years later when the epicentre was quite a long way off in Lincolnshire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Lincolnshire_earthquake

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 29, 2015
  
  4.7 is fairly moderate, especially if it’s shallow and nearby. Once you get over 5 you can start to see damage. The biggest I’ve felt was the 7.1 2010 Christchurch earthquake (it was actually really in Darfield). But the February aftershock of 6.3 felt stronger because it was closer and very shallow. It also killed people and caused far more damage than the larger main shock.
  
  Reply
  1. Secular Vegan
    
    January 30, 2015
    
    This time eight years ago I was in Christchurch. Neither then nor during the rest of my fortnight’s holiday in NZ did I feel a single tremor; even in Wellington where they are supposed to have them regularly.
  2. Rachel M
    
    January 30, 2015
    
    I never felt one until September 4th 2010 either and I had been living in NZ for five years by then. There had been some quakes during that time but somehow I missed them all either because I was asleep or just didn’t notice.
ezpc1

January 29, 2015

Ho boy!……houses “rocked” – is just taking it too far, isn’t it?
“Unusual vibrations / sounds were felt , and some people panicked ” maybe?

Reply
1. Rachel M
  
  January 30, 2015
  
  Houses “rocked” is really taking things a bit far I think. But I guess if you don’t know what the sound is then you could worry there has been a crash or explosion somewhere nearby although even then “panic” is a bit of an overstatement.
  
  Reply