What does a 3.9 earthquake feel like?

[HelloCheekyCat]

We're going to California on holiday soon & the area we're staying in had a 3.9 earthquake yesterday.
Would you feel it at that level?
The only one I've experienced was in the UK in the early 90's when I was woken up by my bed shaking a bit 😂

I live in a state where we have quite a lot of earthquakes. I usually only feel them if they are in the high 3's. Anything lower you don't feel. It does depend on the building you're in, how deep they are, things like that. But in general a 3.7 you can just about feel, so very mild shaking, not alarming. I have been in an 8.6, that was terrifying.

Probably a bit of a shake/rumble and wind chimes would go off. You're not going to notice much unless you're very close to the epicentre

I've been in a couple of low 5s. They were actually quite fun/exciting in an adrenaline rush sort of way. One shook everything - my sister and I were about to shout at each other for shaking the bed we were sitting on before we realised. The other rolled like a wave, which was a bit destabilising. No one was injured and the worst damage was some expensive shops losing stock that fell off shelves. I don't think I'd want to be in one that was higher than 5.5.

They don't tend to do much serious damage below 6 in a place like California - everything is built to strict earthquake regulations so unlikely to have any damage until they're a lot stronger.

I’ve experienced a mild one - don’t know the exact rating though - in Greece. In a hotel at breakfast time - a trembling, felt as if a really heavy lorry was passing just outside. Everybody looked at each other - was that an earthquake? - but the waitress was apparently oblivious!

OTOH the 6.1 one in Aceh, Indonesia - woke to feel the hotel bed violently shaking and all the hangers in the wardrobe rattling! Seriously scary, though of course dh said he merely found it ‘interesting’.😂

There was an earthquake near Swansea about 10 years ago and that measured over 4 on the richter scale. We felt it over on the west side of Bristol and it felt a vehicle had ploughed into the house.

It is not just the richer scale, it also depends on the depth, I lived in New Zealand during the Christchurch earthquakes of the early 2010s. The 2011 quake only measured about 6.3 on the richter scale, however it had a very shallow depth, which is why it destroyed much of the CBD and killed over 100 people. I remember my whole office wobbling and I lived south of Christchurch. Scary times. The quake in 2010 was over 7 on the richter scale but was much deeper in depth, so there was far less damage.

Ever in doubt - duck, cover and hold.

Felt the one in Birmingham 2007ish, the bed was shaking like in a horror film!

Agree with @MarchInHappiness the depth really affects how you feel the quake. I live in Hawke's Bay, NZ and we definitely have our share here - the hope is that lots of tiny ones, means no huge one - fingers crossed.

Last year we had a 5.0 earthquake during the night, and what woke my was my glass of water rattling on my bedside table, and my windows shaking.

Then not so long ago we had a 3.7 and there was a bit of rumble and it felt like heart murmur to me. Nothing too significant.

We have tremors quite frequently as I live in a old mined area, and most of the time I only know about the smaller ones when I hear it on the news.

The Richter scale isn’t used any more - so it’s just magnitude expressed as a whole number and decimal fraction. Bear in mind that’s it’s a logarithmic scale so a magnitude 6 has ten times the amplitude of a magnitude 5.

How it feels (intensity) depends on how far away you are from the epicentre, how deep it was, and the type of rock / soil that you’re on - bedrock hardly moves but soft muds will move a lot (which is why Mexico City, built on an old lake bed, suffers).

Exactly what I came here to say! (From one Chc quakester to another. . .)

3.9, before the 2010/2011 quakes when we felt the full force of nature, was a bit of an enjoyable wobble, a 'gosh, a little bit of a quake!'

Fully depends where you are when it hits and how long it lasts.

I once never felt a 4.2, I was hanging out my washing, came inside to a dozen messages from DH to see if me and baby were ok. He felt it bad in his office but we lived up a hill and I didn’t feel a thing. If I’d been indoors I’d have probably felt it, our house was wood and on stilts, it would have rocked back and forth without much impact. It use to sway in the wind.

however, another time in a supermarket 5 min down the road, I felt like the whole place was going to collapse because of the noise from all the shelves and shaking windows. I can’t remember but I don’t think it was above a 4.

Places with regular earthquakes will have buildings that are equipped to cope with them, not like here in the UK.

The sensation can be anything from feeling like your being jolted to actual shaking. As well as movement the noise can be scary if your not use to it, from shaking walls to a rolling thunder sound.

Most places that have earthquakes have them 100’s of times a day, they just aren’t noticeable, especially to locals who aren’t phased by them usually.

Feels like a big lorry rumbling past your house

As people say, it does depend. The Cuadrilla fracking earthquakes in Lancashire were less than 3 but felt exactly like a particularly large lorry rumbling by.

Not a Cantab as we lived in Dunedin (still a South Islander though!). I honestly couldnt believe how much of a shake Dunedin got given the large distance, I said a prayer and I am not even religious! I was in a tall old office tower though, which probably magnified the shake.

The USGS produces maps to show the intensity for each earthquake - it produces a ‘did you feel it’ map that gives you an idea of how people experienced it - here’s the one for the Hollywood 3.9 earthquake:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci41070112/dyfi/intensity

Explanation of the dyfi table is here:

https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/science/felt-earthquakes-ones-people-feel#overview

3.9 you might not even notice until someone pointed out there had just been an earthquake. I used to live in CA and experienced a few around the 4-5 range. It kinda mostly just felt like a rumble. Like a really big loud lorry went down the road and the whole building just rumbled for a few seconds. I was up in a very tall building for one and didn’t even really feel it, but a few things just swayed in a really surreal way. It’s not necessarily very obvious though and my guess is you might almost miss it.

Funny enough, I was so programmed to think, was that an earthquake?!, living there that even more than a decade in the UK, I still feel things that feel like an earthquake here, and I have to actually remind myself it’s not an earthquake. It’s a bit like baby kicks. Once you’ve felt a baby kick, you’ll have moments when think you feel it, even when you definitely aren’t pregnant and it’s just gas. 😂

I do love that “lorry rumbling by” is the universal feel of an earthquake. 😂

Realistically, depending on how close you are to the epicentre, you may not even feel a 3.9 - especially if the epicentre isn't particularly close. It may just be a kind of gentle shudder.

We were on holiday in Eilat in 1995 when there was a 7.3 earthquake. The bed and entire room was rocking side to side by maybe 4-5 feet, the bed was sliding to and fro across the bedroom, mirrors falling off walls, locked doors swinging open, balcony doors falling off their rails, etc. The sound was like a plane crash - very loud rumbling, large bangs, etc. But even with all that, buildings weren't collapsing - I think around 10 died and maybe 50 were injured, but it was more of things falling off buildings rather than buildings falling. Just lots of cracks in buildings.

Wow that must have been scary!

Thanks everyone, I don't feel apprehensive anymore thanks to all the reassuring comments.
I'm hoping we don't have an experience like @Badbadbunny but like PP have said we'll be in California so the air bnb should be built with earthquakes in mind!