"I feel the earth move under my feet." Yesterday's earthquake in Alaska was a doozy.

Good Friday earthquake of 1964.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch News:

 A 6.3-magnitude earthquake that hit south of Mount Iliamna around 6:35 p.m. Tuesday rattled Alaska from Kodiak to Fairbanks, according to the Alaska Earthquake Center. 

The quake struck roughly 70 miles below the Earth’s surface across Cook Inlet from Homer, said Michael West, a seismologist at the Alaska Earthquake Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The epicenter was about 144 miles southwest of Anchorage. 

“It’s deep -- that’s important,” he said. “That means the shaking was not as strong, but spread widely.” 

Linda Hull of Clam Gulch, about 65 miles away from the earthquake’s epicenter, said she heard a very low rumble before a slow rolling motion started. That lasted for several seconds before she felt a jolt. 

“Pictures didn’t fall off the walls, but they are all crooked,” she said after the quake. Glass figurines fell off her shelves, but didn’t break. “Light fixtures were still swaying for about three minutes after the shock hit,” she said.

So let me first say that I am certainly not a neophyte when it comes to earthquakes. Having lived in Alaska my entire life I have felt more than my fair share.

However this one yesterday was really something else.

My grandmother once described the 64 earthquake as feeling like the ground had gone liquid, and that she could barely stand up. That was what yesterday's earthquake felt like to me.

The ground beneath my feet started to sway so aggressively that it even caused my office chair to roll with me in it, which was fairly disconcerting.

I currently live only about half a mile or so from where my other grandmother lived during the Good Friday earthquake, and her house developed a crack in the foundation that could never be properly repaired, so yeah yesterday's quake most definitely got my attention.

They have been predicting another huge earthquake up here for years, ever since the last one actually, but I think yesterday was the first time that I ever took that threat very seriously.