EARTHQUAKE! Who else heard a loud boom BEFORE the shaking?

Would help if we knew where you were.

I myself slept through the Illinois earthquake. A friend told me that he did too, but that his wife and children woke up. Oddly, though the story he recounts agrees with the OP:

A loud boom, almost like an explosion, that made them suspect something wrong with the furnace or a collapse of the chimney.

That's an odd way to describe an earthquake.

Aren't they starting the O'Hare expansion over there?

Sorry, it is my fault. Too much chocolate cake last night.

Every earthquake I've been in before was just sudden shaking and then it stopped. This was DIFFERENT. It definitely sounded like an explosion which is what initially woke me up BEFORE the shaking. I can't believe more people didn't notice this.

someone on another site I frequent mentioned this sound.

C'MON PEOPLE, much of northern Illinois felt this "quake". Didn't anybody else hear the sound BEFORE things shook?

Years ago the Manassas Fault cracked.

It made a BOOM like a transformer exploding.

Interesting....

[link to www.google.com]

HOLY crap... thats exactly what I thought too...
M kid was sleeping without a shirt on and woke me up for a blanket, I Laid back down, and "BOOM", "shake"..
We were sleeping on the sectional, but PLOWS were out all night, and immidately after the shaking I looked out and a PLOW drove by. thought he lowered the front, but it was UP.
And the snow was allready cleared off the street there..
It wasn't a side to side oscilating shake as associated with MOST quakes, but an up and down movement..
I seriously thought the furnace blew up..
Something else is going on.. NOT a Quake..
Tunguska fireball?
Sconic boom?
Underground TBM?
DUMBS construction?
Shot down UFO?

SOMETHING ELSE!

PS: I live in ST. Charles IL.

Collapse of the foundations of the deep.


~

Check out S Dakota, Arizona and Indiana, slightly interesting, if you're snowed in with nothing better to do..

[link to aslwww.cr.usgs.gov]

I live in Elgin and heard a boom too - I thought it was the snow plow guy dropping the shovel on the driveway and then the house shook. I looked outside and nobody was there.

Antarctica also had movement at around that time.

Makes the world seem so small and interconnected...

The quake was felt over a wide area -- from Wisconsin to Tennessee -- but there were no reports of any damage so far, according to the Kane County and DeKalb County sheriff's departments, which are closest to the epicenter.

"We got hundreds of calls," said DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott. "But we have no reports of damage or injuries."

The magnitude and epicenter were revised after the U.S. Geological Survey studied the "wave forms" from the quake, said Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the geological survey in Golden, Colo.
"The information was better understood," she said.

The nature of the fault activity that caused the quake was unclear, Vaughn said. Past quakes that have affected southern Illinois have been in the Wabash Valley or New Madrid seismic zones.

Are there any foul odors ?

Seriously... before the huge New Madrid earthquakes
people reported bad odors.


~

I smelled methane at night for the past few weeksoutside.

This is exactly the type as the huge New Madrid earthquakes...
those quakes were felt over a very wide area... all the way
to the southern and east coasts. It is a different sort of
earthquake than those in California.


~

And So it begins.....

Experts believe the foul odors associated
with the huge New Madrid earthquakes might
have been the release of hydrogen sulfide
produced from decaying organic matter in
the earth.


~

Did anyone see flashes of light ?

Flashes of light was something else reported
by people who experienced the huge NM EQs.



~

ruh roh

I heard boom. Felt quake early. Downloading lucas' video.

I did, I heard it..........it was a loud sonic boom..........and then it hit and before that there was activity also.....short spurts of activity....that sounded like they were on my roof........

and before that my television reception was bad on an abnormal amount of stations ............

then it hit..........

then I went out side and the clouds were lit up and moving really really fast

and the snow coming off the roof was like electrically charged and dancing in the air............


I swear I am not making this up...........and before this happened I got ringing in my ears, and my friend had BUZZING noise in his for 2 days..........

and I could tell it was coming from the west........

YES, IT WAS AN UP AND DOWN MOVEMENT, NOT SIDE TO SIDE........NEARLY THREW ME OFF MY TREADMILL, I AM ONLY 4 MILES FROM THE CENTER INBETWEEN ROUTE 20 AND PLANK ROAD, ON SWITZER, AND FUNNY THING IS, I KNEW someone that lived in that exact same location.........

my daughter's old boyfriend and his parents.........

Most earthquakes happen 50 miles under, these are only a few miles..........and this seems very odd to me........that it was natural.........

That doesn't sound like a normal "earthquake" to me. Too many really strange happenings in the world today, imho.

.