Earthquake and Hurricane in DC!

It's been a relatively quiet Summer weather wise until this last week.

Tuesday the earthquake shocked all of us. It was my first experience of a quake of that magnitude 5.9. I may have felt slight tremors in the past but not enough for me to even remember them. Larry was at work on the 8th floor of his building. He like the rest of us wondered what was going on and after 5 seconds wanted it to stop. The shaking and rumbling went on for 45 seconds. It doesn't sound like a long time but it sure felt like it. While it's happening, your wondering will the building around you still be standing when it stops. I was on the second floor of the NHM beginning my volunteer shift. The floor beneath my feet felt like a trampoline as the quake started to rumble. At first we wondered had a bomb gone off or was something dropped on the floors below us. When it became sustained we then knew it was an earthquake. We were evacuated to the mall and only after an initial check of the structure, were allow to return to collect our possessions. The museum closed for the rest of the day. In fact all the museums closed until the next day. The Castile is still closed due to damage and is expected to reopen on Monday. 

One of the members here at the club shared with me why it felt like a trampoline. The museums that line Constitution Ave are on very large pilings due to the fact that Constitution Ave many years ago was a canal. The soil around it is mostly sand and beneath the sand is bedrock. The sand would not make a particularly good foundation. The pilings are what gave the building a springy feeling. 

Several of the buildings in DC were not as lucky as the NHM. The Washington Monument suffered quite a bit of damage. Check out the Post Blog in the link on this page. Click on the title of this post.

Yesterday we spent considerable time preparing for Hurricane Irene's arrival. We removed our canvas tarps and sunshades, lashed down our jerry cans and tied our head sail with several wraps. My plants are on the floor of the cockpit and loose things are safely stowed below with us. 

The sun was shinning and when we finished we took the bus to the American Indian Museum. While we were enjoying the museum it had rained, the first of what is to come. It had finished when we came out so we walked home. On the way we stopped at Starbucks for coffee and a Chi. 

When we got back the club was hosting it's usual Friday night fun night. This one with a twist, they called it a hurricane party. Everyone's mood seemed to be light, except for a few that were very nervous and afraid of the impending storm.  We told them to stop watching the weather channel and prepare their boat and not to worry the weather is out of our control.  We stayed longer than we planned but arrived back before 8:30 PM.

Water Fall outside American Indian Museum

It wasn't raining this morning when we got up but it started around 10 AM and hasn't stopped since. It's now almost 7 PM. We didn't get the extreme high tide that was predicted during the night but with all this rain who knows what will happen tonight. We haven't seen winds more than 20 knot gust so far. I hope that is all we get.

The last hurricane, Isabelle, that came though DC flooded the underground garage. Because of that everyone was ask to move their vehicles to the outside parking lot. Larry moved our motorcycle outside yesterday. The last hurricane we went though in Deltaville, Va our bike blew over in the parking lot. This time all the bikes were parked tight between trucks and cars in the lot, in hopes of protection.


This weekend is Larry's three day weekend and we had planned to go down river on the boat. Mother Nature had other plans for us, here we sit at the dock watching out the ports at the gallons of rain as it falls from the sky. Could be worse, at least we are dry and safe.

Picture looking though the dodger at all the rain earlier today!