Most Bloomington residents would measure about an eight on a Richter scale of surprise if an earthquake of equivalent force were to shake this town. But is an earthquake in Bloomington really so farfetched? What about an ice storm? Is a hurricane stretching it? Perhaps Bloomington isn’t as immune to the effects of natural disasters as commonly thought.
“Last December we (Bloomington) had a 3.8 magnitude quake,” Geology Professor Jeremy Dunning says. “But one the of the largest quakes in U.S. history occurred on that same fault line—the New Madrid Fault.”
Although the New Madrid Seismic zone reaches to parts of Southwestern Indiana, Dunning assures us that we’re not really at risk to truly menacing quakes. However, he admits, no one has ever quite figured out why the huge quake in 1812 was so huge…
Ice storms and tornadoes are less foreign to Hoosiers, and their bank accounts. Both disasters can cause millions of dollars worth of damage. Tornadoes frequent Bloomington anywhere from nine to forty times a year, usually between July and October.
“But you can’t be absolutely certain,” Dunning says.
As a town in the middle of a landlocked state, a hurricane seems like a laughable scenario, but the real effects of hurricanes in Indiana might quell that laughter.
“We get the tail end of a hurricane as it heads west,” Dunning says. “But it usually only manifests itself as lots of rain and high winds.”
Sometimes hurricanes can trigger earthquakes, but typically not in Indiana because of its lack of fault lines.
It sounds like there’s no need to tremor, but Bloomington isn’t quite untouchable to Mother Nature’s most fearsome storms.
