While coaching the boys through their school work, I managed to get outside several times to work on my garden and my plants that I’ve started from seed. I replanted some butterfly plants that my Jr Master Gardener students pulled from our community garden to replant in the butterfly garden we’ll be working on. I sat in the sun, counted birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count and even counted a few butterflies. These were the first butterflies I’ve noticed this year which reminded me that the northward Monarch Migration is about to occur. The first butterfly was bright yellow, the other two were orange. Later, I headed to the Fairhope Pier with the boys to meet up with some friends for a walk. What an awesome and exciting day.
Around 5pm we had an earthquake.

I didn’t feel it. It was located just off of the Ft Morgan peninsula, from what the reports say. Folks along the beach felt swaying but I felt nothing. The immediate coast is sandy and our land is clay so I’m guessing, from what I’ve learned in my kids’ science classes, that the sand absorbed the trembler before it reached us.  But after further investigating, I’ve found that folks all over the area (west to Pensacola and north to Coffeeville) have felt it.  Guess I was too busy relaxing to notice. 

Alabama does get earthquakes. The article I’ve linked at the bottom of this blog notes several over the past few years. 

I’ve lived in earthquake prone areas but never gave much thought to coastal Alabama having any. I experienced several small ones in Maryland and knew of several in the Memphis/North Mississippi area when we lived there.  I would often take the boys to the Pink Palace Science Museum and we’d check out the seismograph for recent activity.  And while the kids were really young we spent over 6 years on rumbling coastal South Carolina before someone told me they happen very often there.  Except for the one during the Civil War which almost destroyed Charleston, the earth rumbles constantly and the sand just absorbs it; so I’m told.

So, for an exciting and fun day, an earthquake in South Alabama or off the coast just topped it off.  http://blog.al.com/live/2011/02/alabama_earthquake_fort_morgan.html  I’m just glad I’m not in Arkansas: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110218/ap_on_re_us/us_arkansas_earthquakes