WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!, part 2

Joe and I were outside yesterday morning, when we heard a loud rumble. At first I thought it was going to be thunder, but then it sounded like a very loud explosion and was accompanied by shakiness, for lack of a better description. We had no idea what it was.

Come to find out... it was an earthquake. I had never felt one before, so I had no clue (and I didn't know they were accompanied by such a loud sound). Joe felt one once as a kid in New Jersey, but the way he described it, it sounds like it was more of a topsy-turvy, roly-poly feeling - like a crowd doing the wave at a ballgame.

Here's a news story... by the way, our house is just a sand wedge, as Joe would say (or is it a pitching wedge ??), from Ducktown, TN.

DUCKTOWN, Tenn. (AP) -- A minor earthquake rattled the mountainous area of southeastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and northern Georgia on Saturday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The 3.2-magnitude temblor happened about 9:35 a.m. Saturday. Its epicenter was located about 55 miles east of Chattanooga, near the town of Ducktown.

Becky Cearley, a 14-year dispatcher with the Polk County Sheriff's Department, described the incident as "pretty intense."

"It shook the whole entire building for what seemed like forever, but it was just a matter of seconds," she said.

Cearley said although the Polk County 911 Center was flooded with calls by residents inquiring about the earthquake, no one was hurt during the earthquake.

"No one was injured and there weren't any damages reported but there were a lot of people calling curious as to what happened. Many people thought it was an explosion," she said.

According to Cearley, since her time as a 911 dispatcher she has experienced small earthquakes in Ducktown and surrounding areas before but nothing compared to the magnitude of the Saturday morning quake.

"We've had very minor quakes in the past but they were only short, little rumbles. Nothing like this," she said.

A dispatcher with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina, just east of the epicenter, also said there were no reports of damage or injuries, but a couple of people did call wondering what had happened.

The U.S. Geological Survey received reports of light shaking as far away as Gainesville, Ga., about 60 miles to the south.