Magnitude 3.6 quake outside of Charleston, SC

While my Left Coast US and Japanese readers may scoff at the fuss, folks along the southeast US coast are abuzz with this morning's minor tremor near Summerville, South Carolina. I'm not a seismology expert, or even an enthusiast for that matter, but I do remember reading a waterfront plaque about the Great Charleston Earthquake of 1886 when invited there for a talk at the Medical University of South Carolina. That magnitude 7.6 (estimated) monster stands as the strongest earthquake in recorded eastern US history.

Local coverage of the recent temblor is here.

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3.6 is wimpy. A fertilizer plant in Toulouse blew up in 2001, and the produced quake registered 3.2 on Richter scale - and there was only 200 tons of ammonium nitrate.