Even though it was magnitude 3.6, and the epicenter was about 10 miles away, it just barely woke me, and I wasn’t really sure at the time if was a quake or if a particularly heavy freight train had just passed. After all, I live pretty close to the railroad tracks, and have learned to sleep through quite a bit of rumbling. Also, it’s not unusual for pictures on the wall to rattle a bit when a big train goes by.

Still, I had a vague sense that this was not just a train. Checking the USGS web site, I discovered that this had, in fact, been the largest earthquake in Maryland since the 3.1 Hancock, MD tremor in 1978.

There was no damage anywhere that I could see, and although Twitter traffic didn’t show anything, I soon found quite a few Facebook statuses mentioning the quake ( the majority seem to have slept through it).

No car alarms, no sirens, and a lot less shaking than in the San Francisco area quakes I’ve experienced.

Still, it’s something to talk about. Almost worthy of a blog post.

The USGS places the precise epicenter at 39.167°N, 77.252°W:

View July 16, 2010 Earthquake in a larger map

Traces from the Maryland Geologic Survey

Posted from Rockville, Maryland, United States.