The noise was really the unsettling part. The shaking, not so much, kind of like a train passing by...

http://www.wataugademocrat.com/news/caldwell-county-earthquake-felt-in-boone/article_761cb2b2-8466-11e4-b432-6f0c2c74ef7a.html

http://www.goblueridge.net/news/1/26456-quake-rocks-avery-burke-mcdowell-line

---or in western VA?

Or, fracking fucking. (I would prefer the latter to the former.)

I do not like fracking, but some people have fracking on the brain.

Earthquakes happen everywhere. I remember more than one in my life in fucking Michigan. Both were before fracking became a thing. It's all about our planet being tectonically active.

Yes! Fracking can cause tremblers. However, that does not mean that all tremblers are caused by fracking.

Earthquake? Must be fracking! Wrong!!!

Idiocy here.

especially as they are fracking more in WV, western VA and western NC.

Maybe the prevalence of faults in the region is NOT such a good reason to frack there?

I say it's a reasonable association and will become more so in the east, where earthquakes are felt much further away than they are out west.

But thanks for another...um...point of view.

Seismic activity increases near both of these.

You describe one to a T. I'm in L.A. & have experienced many like that. There are different types, too. Some are "rollers" with less noise.

and we didn't notice the one a couple of years ago near DC. I really never expected that kind of sound.

--everyone described it as a loud concussion like an explosion.

The noise is terrible, esp the explosive banging sound. The '94 quake & aftershocks here were deadly. My neighborhood alone had 1/4 of its population displaced due to residential property destroyed. Yet here we all are, living on edge.

Helluva buzz when it's over, though.

I kinda like it. (EDIT: But I'm used to it.)

I'm in the central southern part of NC in Richmond County. When I felt it, I immediately checked the USGS site and didn't see anything. Something in the back of my mind kept saying an earthquake was getting ready to happen in NC because of what I felt and heard. The last time there was one close enough to be felt here in NC, I felt something before the actual quake then too. I'm not sure what I was feeling and hearing, but it seems every time there is a quake, I barely notice the quake but feel something about a day before the quake. It's weird. I wonder if there is some sort of scientific explanation for why I feel something earlier than other people do and even before the seismometers. I feel like a weirdo. I might as well be saying I saw an alien or got abducted, but I know what I felt was some kind of pre earthquake tremor, because it was such a distinct type of vibration/rumbling combination and when it happens, an earthquake hits not long after.

Small tremors have happened every so often since long before I've moved here. They'll be here long after you're dead and gone. Worse you might get is a little rattle and something broken if it's setting too close to the edge of some furniture and it falls to the floor.

An explosion? Never heard anyone describe them that way. Most they are is around 3.0 or so, which is to say hardly anything at all. I suppose an explosion to one person might be barely noted by another. But some people call where we are mountains while the locals call them hills.

But to answer your question, no I didn't feel it. But I never do. My wife usually does but she didn't mention anything to me about it if she did.

We also live along the Brevard Fault Zone, but this is the first earthquake that anyone in my family has experienced. (They have been here for generations.) The sound like an explosion might be explained by our proximity to the epicenter. Apparently, we are less than one mile away. I'm sure that I would have slept through it if not for the sound.