A magnitude 3.0 earthquake struck Virginia today, with the epicenter located about five miles south of the town of Dillwyn in Buckingham County.
The tremblor hit just after 1pm ET, and more than 150 people across Virginia and other nearby states — such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Maryland — reported feeling shaking up to intensity level four, according to the US Geological Survey.
The USGS describes this level of shaking as 'moderate' tremors that are 'felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day.' At night, it may be strong enough to wake some people up, and it can break dishes, rattle doors and rock parked cars.
As of 3:20pm ET, no damages or injuries have been reported.
It is rare for earthquakes to strike Virginia, as this East Coast state is seated in the middle of the North American tectonic plate — far from its seismically active edges.
But this isn't the first time it's happened. A similarly-sized magnitude 2.8 quake hit Richmond, Virginia in January, with more than 1,000 people reporting shaking.
And in 2011, a magnitude 5.8 quake struck this same area, causing 'severe' shaking, that damaged the Washington Monument in DC.
Even though Virginia sits in the middle of the North American plate, there are faults running through this state. When they produce quakes, they do so at much greater depths than those that occur on the West Coast.
A typical Virginia earthquake strikes at a depth three to fifteen miles, and therefore it is not always possible to associate a specific earthquake with a specific fault, according to the Virginia Department of Energy.
Today's quake struck at a depth of roughly five miles, and the source of the tremblor is still unclear.
East Coast earthquakes are less energetic than West Coast quakes, but they are felt over a much wider area because of the structure of the basement rock (the ancient rocks that form the foundation of Earth's crust) in this region.
In Virginia, the area affected by an earthquake can be up to 10 times larger than that of a similar earthquake in the western US, Virginia Department of Energy states.
Some experts believe that a large, catastrophic earthquake could rock this state some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment