OMAK — A Friday morning earthquake that shook the north-central portion of Washington has been upgraded to a magnitude 4.6.
The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network says it was upgraded from a 4.0 after a seismologist reviewed the data.
The 5:09 a.m. quake— centered seven miles northwest of Omak, and eight miles northwest of Okanogan — was still described as light.
That’s not how a former Port Angeles City Council member now living in Omak described it.
The quake was “startling and immediate,” Larry Williams said in an email after the quake woke him up.
“This was not one of those ‘normal’ swaying, wave type movements like we experienced in Port Angeles in the Nisqually Quake of 2001,” Williams added.
“It started as if there had been a big sonic boom or an explosion . . .The shaking then continued for a longer period and felt like you were riding in a stiff spring pickup truck while going too fast over a washboarded dirt road.”
Williams, who grew up in San Jose, Calif., said that quakes are nothing new to him.
“But I’ve never felt a quake hit as hard, rattle as bad, or scare me as much as this one.”
A dispatcher in the Okanogan County sheriff’s office, Sarah Gibson, said there were no reports of injuries or damage.
It also was felt in Leavenworth, Tonasket, Chelan, Moses Lake and Colville.
