The moment when birds and bugs took flight at the Oklahoma earthquake. Photo credit: National Weather Service, Norman, Ok.
The things to watch out for in Oklahoma are usually tornadoes, floods and boredom – not earthquakes. So imagine the surprise when the Sooner State was struck by 23 discernible earthquakes over the weekend, including a 5.6-magnitude earthquake on Saturday night followed by aftershocks through Sunday.
In the spectrum of terrifying earthquakes, the Oklahoma earthquakes were pretty minor: The quakes damaged around 14 buildings in the state, as well as several roads and highways, and only two minor injuries were reported. That said, the 5.6-magnitude quake that struck at 11:53 on Saturday night was the strongest recorded earthquake to ever strike Oklahoma and was felt as far away as Wisconsin and South Carolina. Both it and the 4.7-magnitude quake that preceded it originated in Lincoln County, where people were understandably a bit rattled. Joey Wakefield, emergency management director for Lincoln, told Reuters, “We’re in tornado country, man… These earthquakes, it just scares the hell out of everybody here.”
They may have to get used it – according to The New York Times, the region has seen an up-tick in geological activity in recent years, with earthquakes increasing in frequency and intensity. Since mid-2009, the state has seen 10 times the usual number of earthquakes; it could be a natural cycle, geologists said, but because the state’s geological activity has only been recorded for the last 50 years, it’s difficult to tell.
End of days? Maybe. Even weirder was that the quake’s shaking caused flocks of birds and bugs to take to the air at the same time – a not wholly unexpected event that was unexpectedly caught on National Weather Service radar.
