Ever since I moved to Nevada, one of the most seismically active states in the U.S., I've had the habit of checking the USGS recent earthquake map nearly daily. For the past two months or so, I had noticed an uptick in earthquake activity near Reno, but since I hadn't felt anything I thought it was nothing unusual. There indeed was a 6.0 earthquake in northeast Nevada that happened right before the recent activity here, but it occurred more than 300 miles away from here, so a connection is possible but unlikely.

This past Thursday, we finally started to feel this recent swarm of earthquakes, the only earthquake experiences in my life where I've been near the epicenter. (I was once woken up by a 5-something earthquake in Boston, but it was epicentered in the middle of the state of Massachusetts.) I was working at my desk at home, and noticed it swaying back and forth. Flea was on the phone in the kitchen, and I told her what I was experiencing, but she waved me off as she didn't feel it herself.

A few minutes later, a 4.2 hit just five miles from our house. This one was impossible to ignore, as the house shook consistently and unpredictably for three to five seconds. I enjoyed it, as it was too mild to be scary -- it was a minor earthquake, as looking at the USGS California map daily I see 4-something earthquakes all the time.

But last night the tectonic activity upped the ante in a much more notable way. We were in the movie theater, perhaps 15-20 minutes away from the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Suddenly, the entire theater started shaking violently, and I grabbed the rail in front of me and held on. It lasted a solid 10 seconds at least, and this time I definitely started to get scared. (How reliable are the ceilings in a movie theater?) It was also a communal experience, as during the event everyone in the theater was gasping and looking at each other. When it was over, my heart was racing, and I probably enjoyed the rest of the movie more for it. (In general, I enjoy Dracula musicals and puppets.)

This one was a 4.7 -- again, not something that is considered a major earthquake, but big enough to do some minor damage. But my heart was racing because I knew that 6 and 7 Richter scale earthquakes are not unheard of in Nevada, and with the build-up of activity on Thursday, such a major earthquake was feeling possible. In fact, this morning I read the following in an article about last night's event:

Ken Smith, a seismologist at the university lab, said the recent activity around Reno is unusual in that the quakes started out small and continue to build in strength..."If the pattern continues we may be looking at a larger event" in the Reno area, Smith said Friday. “We wouldn’t be surprised to see it (swarm) end at any time and it also wouldn’t be surprising to see a large earthquake. The bottom line is we don’t know what will happen.”

So the fact that what we're experiencing is "unusual" is indeed a little frightening. We'll see how the weekend goes, but I'm hoping that a supervolcano isn't in the making. That's an exaggeration, but certainly a major earthquake in the near future wouldn't be a scientific surprise.