Happy New year to you all from us at Prohibition PR, last night was a bit stranger than normal, not just because it was the final night of the Christmas holidays and my whole family are currently struggling with one of those nasty winter viruses but because we experienced an earthquake sat at home.
It was just after 9pm and I was sat up watching something on TV when the whole house began to shake, the cupboards started to make rattling noises. It lasted for a about five seconds and felt like a huge train was driving past right under our house. As soon as we felt it we knew it was a tremor but we weren’t sure far it would have travelled, so I went onto my Facebook account and it was full of status updates (more than 30) talking about it and asking what it was. It is very clever how a social network can bring all your friends together when a big incident like that takes place – only a few years ago this wouldn’t have happened. Not only did the earthquake make waves on Facebook but it also made it onto the 10pm local news and it was even on the national news this morning. BBC News reported:
A small earthquake has hit northern England, scientists have confirmed.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) said the 3.6-magnitude quake struck 9km north-west of Ripon in North Yorkshire just after 2100 GMT on Monday.
People in Bingley and Skipton, north-west of Leeds, reported feeling tremors, which were experienced across Cumbria and West Yorkshire.
The BGS said an earthquake of such size might be felt up to 100km away but was unlikely to cause much damage.
‘House shook’
It said many people throughout the region had reported feeling the event.
BGS spokeswoman Dr Aoife O’Mongain said: “It would have only lasted for a couple of seconds. And at that strength it is not likely that it would have caused any damage.
“People living in the vicinity may have felt their windows rattling as if a lorry was going past.”
As you can see the epicentre was near Ripon and I live on the Ripon side of Harrogate so it wasn’t too far away. So tell me did the earth move for you last night and if so what did you think?
