I got this neat-o weather station a month or so ago. I’ve wanted one for a long time, and now I consult it daily to see just how cold it is outside while I sit at my desk in my comfy chair and screw around with my computer. It’s one of those fancy ones that automatically updates its time by a radio signal, and it has an outdoor remote temperature/humidity sensor that radios in its current feelings to the base station on my desk. Nice.

Anyways, last night near 3am it started beeping for some unknown reason. Like an alarm clock or something! I was awake and trying my best to play Halflife 2, but it wouldn’t stop beeping. So I did what any normal person would do, I took the batteries out. And you know what happened next?

We had an earthquake! No kidding! In the middle of my game, I had the unpleasant feeling that someone had grabbed my comfy chair and shook it all around just to annoy me, but there wasn’t anyone there! Neat.

So, that was my first real earthquake experience. Once I felt something in Alaska that I attributed to an earthquake, which it probably was, but it was very weak. After that little temblor last night, I lost my interest in the game, and went to bed instead, with an escape route planned in my mind in case a stronger one came later in the night to shake my apartment apart.

So, it was a small quake and it wasn’t exactly nearby – but it was less than 100 miles away (here is a map of where it is relative to me in Ravensburg, scroll to the bottom of the linked page). It was somewhere between 5.4 and 4.9 ( I found conflicting reports about its strength).

Back to the weather station. Did it pick up an emergency radio signal to tell me that something serious was going on, right before I yanked the batteries? The manual is in German so I don’t really know the details of how it works. I’m guessing that’s what happened, though.

Next time it starts yelling at me, I’ll run for cover.