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Delaware earthquake: Philly region reacts to 4.1 magnitude shocker

Social media posters wrote of cats (and young children) running and jumping in their laps, window blinds rattling, kitchen islands shaking and whole houses swaying like rubber. By dinner, there were jokes.

USGS map shows location of earthquake in Delaware that shook the Philadelphia and South Jersey region too.
USGS map shows location of earthquake in Delaware that shook the Philadelphia and South Jersey region too.Read moreUSGS

First, there was the earthquake. Then, the immediate race to social media.

"Earthquake?" numerous people from Philadelphia to South Jersey and the Shore wrote in breathless posts on Facebook.

Indeed. A 4.1 magnitude shocker was based in Delaware, but felt in the social media hotbeds throughout the Philadelphia region.

And it was described in meticulous, if repetitive detail.

On Facebook, posters wrote of cats (and young children) running and jumping in their laps, window blinds rattling, kitchen islands shaking and whole houses swaying like rubber.

"I almost fell off my bike," wrote James Sarappa from Egg Harbor Township.

On a Margate community page, Rick Hitchens said he was near the bay. "The car rocked and the ducks quacked," he wrote.

Radio personality Harry Hurley, in Sculville, Atlantic County, wrote that "out of no where, my house started to shake like Linda Blair's bed in The Exorcist. The tremor lasted for just a few seconds. But, it was intense."

People began recycling old memes from overhyped storms of yore.

And by dinner time, people were already starting to joke about it.

"I felt the house shake here in Chestnut Hill for about five seconds and initially assumed it was just another unhinged tweet from 45," wrote Todd Bernstein of Philadelphia on Facebook, referring to @realdonaldtrump, who was tweeting about the Dow Jones Industrial Average around the time the earthquake was felt.