Today’s quake near Taupo was widely felt

We’re advising our New Zealand readers to have their emergency kits and plans at the ready after another earthquake shook the North Island this morning.

A magnitude 5.5 earthquake has been felt throughout the lower and middle North Island.

Centred about 10km north-east of Taupo, Geonet said the intensity was “moderate”.

Felt as far south as Nelson and as far North as Hamilton, the quake struck at a depth of 110 km.

Geonet upgraded the magnitude from an earlier reading of 5.1.” read more

The quake details are as follows (source geonet)

The quake was recorded at the drum at Black Stump farm

 The quake was felt as far south as Wellington, posters on the Trademe forum said

“Wellington CBD 12th floor – quite a big rock-roll happened here…”

“going to change my pants in wellington!”

The country’s MPs were also affected.  Grant Robertson, MP tweeted the quake was felt strongly in Parliament.

“That was a big one. Well, felt big in Parliament House,”

and another Trademe member said it had been felt strongly in Taupo

“Holy crap….bad her in Taupo”

On a British expats forum a person in Feilding wrote

I hid under my desk.  The energy of the earthquake took four minutes to travel from Taupo to Feilding where I work. My husband felt it and he’s in Wellington today.

Did anyone else drop, cover, hold ?  No, thought not.

No reports yet of damage…

As with some other earthquakes this one was preceded by whale strandings

Odd thing is, I was reading a thread last night about 51 whales stranding themselves at east cape, with the op saying, you know what that means, then this quake today.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Community/MessageBoard/Messages.asp
x?id=1136968&topic=45

the same thing happened in feb 2011 48 hours before the chch feb quake

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/can-whale-strandi
ngs-help-predict-earthquakes.html

kind of a weird.