I felt it here at the intersection of Braddock & 495. My wife felt it in Burke also.

Matt, I told you I lived in a microclimate!

I thought something blew up....

Didn't feel anything up here in Sterling

"A huge BOOM and a whole lot of shaking. Earthquake in Virginia, more details at 5."

Oh gooooooooooooood RUN!!! Fox 5 is doing team coverage. Oh no the world is ending AHHHHHHHHHHH.

;)

Can you say "ratings machine," anyone? I live 10 miles away and we felt nothing. But the news stations are gonna hype it up to the quake of the century though. ;)

But being the science geek I am, having an earthquake is pretty cool. I still remember the 2003 Richmond quake very well.

yep we all felt it here in Springfield!

seriously?? the world is getting scarier and scarier...

Heard a low frequency boom and a quick shake of the house. It came and went in 2 seconds in South Arlington. My initial thought was that it was some sort of distant explosion.

yup! i was sitting in school, adn our chairs shook! where it started is only a few steps from my house actually.

No tremors discernible where I was, but the postings here bring back memories of my California college daze, not far from the fault line. Every few months, clothes would sway in the closets, dishes rattle on the shelves, the floor might sort of shiver. And for a few moments life would be totally suspended...while we waited...to see...what happened...next...

Nothing I could feel in Reston...

Wow! Felt it here in Falls Church! Thought it was construction or a tree falling or something!

I had been drinking a few beers and had my gun sights lined up on a mole when BANG! The next thing I knew dinner was scurrying up a tree and my rent was 15 days overdue. Don't believe the lies, the government is covering up something big here folks...the inner scientist in me says that the bang was not caused by an earthquake...it was robots, big ones.

I sitting on the concrete porch at a Friend's house in Annandale, about one half mile east of the Beltway,near the corner of Braddock and Backlick Roads. I heard a loud boom, and the house, porch, and foundation shook for about five seconds, then all activity stopped. I looked up in the sky, thinking is was a sonic boom. The children I was tending to outside did not say anything about the experience.

Don't worry fellow Washingtonians, being a little quake enthusiast myself (or as some of us call ourselves "Quakelors") I have spent the a great deal of my youth engineering a homemade richter scale in my garage. For the past seven years I have been monitoring the treacherous fault line that lurks beneath our great state. According to my readings (or as call them, "Henderaks"), we are approximately 4 Henderaks away from anything major. My richterscale (aka "The Hendertron") had been going crazy at the onset of the quake. But after comparing the readings to the state's 7 history--I can safely safe that this 4 Henderlak buffer zone we're in will prevent any major wall pictures and/or kitchen plates from being disturbed by a quake for at least 7 more years (or as I call them: "Hendsors")

OMG! THERE WAS AN EARTHQUAKE!??! MY PONIES! I HOPE MY PONIES R SAFE! If anyone seez a loose pony on the streetz send me an email plz LUV U ALL!!!11111 :*(

Felt nothing here in Loudoun. I'm quite disappointed. I didn't feel the earthquake before that either... when was that again? 5 years ago?

I can't believe an earthquake hit our area. Luckily before this tragedy struck I had just returned from stocking up on supplies at Costco. I'm waiting out this living hell one day at a time in my wifi bunker. If there are any survivors out there, please send a signal..YOU ARE NOT ALONE

I was sitting with some fellow teachers in the teachers lounge (in North Arlington) when we felt the room shake and heard a sorta boom (not loud, but distinct). a look out the windows yielded no answers so we figured it was a jet or something. we were PSYCHED to find out it was earthquake! (teachers are, by their nature, pretty big geeks)

my husband took it as a doomsday warning...

We felt it in McLean! Just a second or two of a low but very powerful boom, and the house shook. I thought it was a distant explosion.

I live right across from George Mason University and was in my apartment when it happened. At first i thought i was just going crazy from writing all these papers for grad school. I thought it was thunder or a big rickety dump truck blasting through the neighborhood. When i walked in my kitchen a glass was shaking and i knew it was strange. it was rally scary and out of the ordinary. Weird, thought only Cali would get quakes, guess not.

I live in Annandale near Lil River and Backlick and felt what seemed like a big explosion. Sounded like one, too. But why??? None of the half dozen or so quakes I was in out in Los Angeles and San Jose ever felt, much less sounded like an explosion. They were higher on the Richter scale, 3 to 5, and the ground shook and rolled. You had to grab hold of whatever to keep your balance. Things fell off shelves. This was totally different. What made it sound like an explosion? Anybody know?

According to Gary McGrady on Fox 5, they don't know why there was a boom. But he said that the boom only happens with shallow earthquakes, ones that are less than 10km down.

My completely uneducated guess would be that the boom was caused by the plates sliding under each other and snapping and all that fun stuff.

On Earthquake Booms from USGS

Just as I said yesterday ... CALIFORNICATION!!!

felt it at robinson

weatherdudeVa(Lake Ridge) thanks for your explanation, which makes good sense. What baffled me is that it sounded so very like a typical above ground explosion - plus Ft. Belvoir officials claiming responsibility for a detonation, only to later deny they detonated anything, after the report of the earthquake came out, is the kind of switcheroo that invites suspicion.

I heard that something went wrong with one of the student's senior projects in the geosystems lab at TJ.

Jason of the Capital Weather Gang, thanks for the link. Fascinating information. I love natural surprises - not to trivialize their potential. (So sad for Myanmar)

Heard the boom and felt it out here in Fairview Park/Falls Church. Thought it was an explosion.. About 5 minutes later - fire alarms in our bldg went off!

o please. i live near san francisco. you guys are a bunch of babies. psh.

We felt it in Fairfax, at work, in the lunchroom. One of the walls shook for a split second and we thought something really heavy fell on the floor above us. We actually joked about it being a mini earthquake and found out later it was!

I felt it in Annandale by the Fairfax Hospital. I was napping in my living room and all of a sudden I felt our building shake for about a second. I thought it could be a quake but wasn't sure. I dismissed it as a construction effect, but then I read this article. WOW!!!

we felt it too!!! my and my school mates thaought something fell on the school, or constuction!

I was in the middle of a final in class and we felt the whole building move. We thought it was the construction work going on across the street.

Definite evidence of global warming.