A colleague (we're in NJ) was on the phone with Toronto, and the Canadians felt it a short time (10 seconds?) after we did. How fast do these things travel?
About 10 years ago during a minor earthquake in the California Bay Area, I happened to be on the phone with my girlfriend at the time who was in Mountain View, I was in San Jose. The conversation went something like:
GF: "Oh! There's an earthquake!"
Me: "What, no there isn-- Oh wow, there's an earthquake!"
(few seconds of shaking)
GF: "Okay, it's over"
Me: "No it isn't, I stil feel-- Oh yeah, it's over!"
I'd estimate the delay to have been ~2-3 seconds over ~20 miles -- but I don't remember where the epicenter was, or how deep the quake was.
Well, let's suppose you're in Trenton, NJ (since you didn't specify). The distance between Trenton and Toronto is 546 km. If it took 10 seconds to travel there, then it was traveling at 54.6 km/s, or 196560 km/hour. For comparison, the speed of sound is 340.29 m/s, or 0.34029 km/s; that means that the shockwave travelled at Mach 160.
Of course, this assumes that it was traveling over the surface, so it's really lower than this, but I'm unsure of how much. From what I'm seeing, the fastest earthquakes generally travel about 13 km/s, so this may be way high.
