Earth Matters

Nothing to see here, move along…

August 23rd, 2011 by Mike Carlowicz

 

At Earth Observatory, we try to bring you views of as many natural events as we can fit into a day. Some days, the satellites don’t have a good view. And other days, we have to leave the office because of an earthquake

While most of the U.S. East Coast is talking about the quake that set the ground rippling from South Carolina to Montreal, we can’t offer you the maps of ground shaking intensity or tremor magnitude that we usually assemble. That’s because NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center was shut down this afternoon for building and infrastructure checks, as were many other federal facilities in the Washington, DC, area. We’ll post something once we are back online tomorrow.

Compared to the disastrous earthquakes that have rattled the world in the past year, the quake in Mineral, Virginia, is a baby. But in an area that does not get many noticeable quakes, it rattled millions of people…

Virginia wasn’t the only unusual part of the U.S. shaking today. Colorado saw it’s biggest quake in 40 years.

We were thinking about showing Hurricane Irene, which is beating a menacing path toward the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and the eastern U.S. coast. Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic have already been pounded. But the storm was positioned today in a slot just between the orbital path of the Terra and Aqua satellites (views here and here and here) . The view is likely to be better tomorrow.

For now, we will point you to this view from our friends on the International Space Station (video here). Keep your eyes on our natural hazards section, as I suspect we will see a lot more of that storm this week.

3 Responses to “Nothing to see here, move along…”

  1. Gary Stuckey says:

    Thanks for the update and explanation! It is always best to “tell it like it is” with whatever information gaps acknowledged.

  2. Michelle Flack says:

    Thank you – too funny – as we all ran out of our building yesterday and found it very difficult to get back to work mode! LOVE your work ….

  3. Cooper Jackson says:

    I like your blog i hope everyone is ok and not injured…