Hoosiers report feeling Virginia earthquake

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Several Hoosiers took to Twitter on Tuesday afternoon to declare they felt what might be an earthquake.

The Associated Press reports a magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit near Mineral, Va. around the same time.

“Did we just have an earthquake?” Twitter user @iukatie tweeted at 1:59 p.m.

“Anyone else feel like there was an earthquake in #indy? Our building just shook. (Or did I drink too much coffee?!)” Twitter user @hust0058 tweeted at 1:57 p.m.

As news of the earthquake spread, other Twitter users also tweeted in disappointed that Indianapolis missed the earthquake.

Several Central Indiana residents contacted 24-Hour News 8 saying they felt their chairs move at work.

Robert L. Nowak, a professor at Purdue University, said the terrain in the eastern United States actually allows quake activity to be felt for long distances.

"It turns out that seismic waves do propagate farther in the eastern United States than they do in the western United States," he said. "So an equivalent magnitude event in California would have a much smaller area of reported damage than an equivalent quake in the eastern United States."