Just before 2 PM ET a 5.8-5.9 earthquake struck the East Coast of the United States near outside Mineral, Virginia. Damage was minimal…but reaction on Twitter was extensive, with 40,000 earthquake related tweets in the first 60 seconds, and a peak of 5500 tweets per second. Click here for an animation of how Earthquake-Related Tweets spread, and here for a chart comparing the speed of seesmic waves to the speed of tweets.
The first related tweet was 24 seconds after the #earthquake hit, from @JordnJnkieJuice. The reaction of humorist Andy Borowitz was typical:
Stats
Funny Reactions
This was the biggest quake to hit the East coast since 1897 (a 5.9 in VA) and the second biggest since they started recording, after a 7.3 that hit South Carolina in 1886.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
@FohBohGal stole the “Californians stir coffe with 5.9 ” gag from me! That was my joke first
You provide no Twitter username or link to a tweet or blog post. If you’d like to provide some evidence, I will change the tweet, credit you, and apologize for the error. Otherwise, I will delete your comment, as making a claim with no evidence is not useful.
Update: Apparently this one is yours, but, according to Twitter, that one was at 4:01 PM, while the one from @FohBohGal was at 2:19 PM …almost two hours before yours.