Except I did not say Fudge

We know everything is bigger and wilder in Texas.  No examples needed. We have all the oddities and extremes.  Down the years, the Lone Star State has had its share of hurricanes, tornadoes, hail, oil boom and busts.  Add to that Oswald, Whitman, and Koresh,  Just last year Dallas was front page news when the first Ebola victim in the the U.S. showed up unannounced on our doorstep. Not to be outdone, 2015 started with a bang - or more like a shudder.

At about 3.10pm on Tuesday January 6th our 18 story office building decided to shift a few inches to the north.  Oh fudge indeed.  For about four or five seconds, it shuddered, shook and flexed.  Yes, dear readers, Irving Texas, located in once what was pristine prairie had an earthquake.  Here we are, thousand of miles from the San Andreas, the Heyward, the Pacific Rim of Fire, a-shaking and a-shuddering like a giant mound of jello, our buidling going for a walk towards Arkansas.

Granted in the grand scheme, it was small.  Only a 3.5.  But heck, when an 18 floor office building (with a few thousand workers) starts to very noticeably move, at that time you don't think about the magnitude.  Just like the one we experienced in San Bruno, CA in 1996 you wonder is this going to get even more violent and when will it stop.  Hence the "Oh Fudge" moment.

Geologists will tell you our region should be earthquake free.  However, we sit on the Balcones Fault that runs from Del Rio down near Mexico all the way to Oklahoma.  They say the fault has not shifted in fifteen million years (how can they know that?).  But for some reason in the last couple of months the fault seems to have come alive and we have had twenty-plus "temblors".

There are so many theories, the most prominent being fracking and there are gas wells drilled in the area. Most of the activity is centered around the old Cowboys Stadium, which was imploded in 2010.  Did they forget a stick or two of dynamite?  Could it be the ghost of Tom Landry?  It is almost inevitable Jerry Jones has a role in this.

Between this and the Ebola scare, the consensus is the Plague of Locusts is not far away.