Simviation Forums

April 18 is the 100 year anniversary of the big 1906 earthquake in San Francisco

 Has anyone out there been in an earthquake?  Coming from California (the East Bay) I've been through many small tremblers, but I was out of town when the last major one hit there in the late 1980's.  Then I moved to the Seattle area and was in the 7.0 that hit Seattle around 1994.

 Its errie to feel the ground move under you like a dish of jello.  At first you feel the ground roll, like your in a boat on a rolling sea, and you get a dizzy sensation for an instant.  Then that's followed by a sharp shake, laterally, that shifts the ground back and forth under you.

Then I moved to the Seattle area and was in the 7.0 that hit Seattle around 1994.

Are you sure you're not talking about the 6.8 earthquake that happened in the Seatle area on Feb 28, 2001?

I remember it all too well

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 I live in Federal Way, about 25 miles south of Seattle, but I work at the steel mill in West Seattle.

 One of my big worries that day was that I would come home and find my entertainment center laying face down!  Its alittle top heavy and still is.  But when I got home I found everything o.k.

I've been in a few moderately big quakes when I used to live in California.  Now, I'm in tornado country.  Never seen a tornado, but I seen a few mesocyclones.  Very cool to watch.  You can see them rotate right before your eyes.

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[quote]I've been in a few moderately big quakes when I used to live in California.

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 Has anyone out there been in an earthquake?

I'm still bitter about this.  The only catastophic event I was ever in - I slept through.  It was a 6.4, if memory serves me right.  Not much I remember about it, for obvious reasons.

I take it then that mesocyclones are cyclones that don't touch the ground.

Plenty of info on the Web. I found this on Wikipedia but don't fully understand it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesocyclone
Identification

The word mesocyclone is, strictly speaking, only associated with weather radar terminology. This is because the presence of a mesocyclone can only be truly verified by Doppler weather radar. Mesocyclones are most often identified in the right-rear flank of supercell thunderstorms and squall lines, and may be distinguished by a hook echo or gate-to-gate rotation signature on Doppler weather radar.

Visual cues such as a rotating wall cloud or tornado may also hint at the presence of a mesocyclone. This explains why the term has entered into wider usage in connection with rotating features in severe storms.


[quote]I know that this question has been asked before, but is the U.S. the only country that experances tornados?

The reason why doppler radar is used to verify mesocyclones is because doppler can identify rotation.  However, I don't agree with that definition saying doppler is the only true means of identifying a mesocyclone.  If you're looking out and you see that baby rotating right before your eyes, you have visually identified what a doppler radar picks up through echoes.

And it's an awesome sight.  I've seen a few of them.

I used to work graveyard shift during, if memory serves me correct, the 1986 quake in Southern California.