ROMAN: They are happening, certainly not of this magnitude, but there have been reports of smaller earthquakes on the East Coast in recent years. And would it be true to say that these are happening all the time, of this magnitude or little less, and this is just one that we happen to feel?

We're talking about the earthquake earlier that most of us felt.

And so we do have faults left over from that time, that if they're under sufficient stress can slip and produce earthquakes, like the one we felt last Tuesday.įLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. So millions of years ago, the East Coast was very much like the current West Coast in that it was the site of an active plate boundary. And here on the East Coast, we do have faults in the rock that are left over from previous cycles of tectonic activity a long time ago. You need a plane of weakness, and that could be something like a fault embedded in the rock, and then, you need force on that plane to drive that sudden release of energy. ROMAN: Well, you basically need two things for an earthquake. It's just the plate shaking of its own, nothing bumping into it, sliding under it, anything like that? We tend to feel earthquakes, more commonly, closer to plate boundaries.įLATOW: So we're not on a fault line that's on a plate boundary. And so that makes this earthquake somewhat unique, and that's also why it was somewhat surprising. We're, in fact, very far away from the nearest plate boundary. So here on the East Coast, we're not on a plate boundary. ROMAN: Well, it's - it's what's known as an intraplate earthquake, meaning that it's an earthquake that happened very far away from one of the Earth's major tectonic plate boundaries. Roman.įLATOW: We keep hearing that the reason why people felt this quake widespread because it was on a single plate, is that right? She is a geophysicist and a staff scientist in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institute in Washington. Why is that? Well, here to answer some of those questions is Diana C. And last time, a quake hit this close to something this size in the area was 1875.īut when quakes do hit the East Coast, more people are feeling them over a wider area. Big quakes in this part of the country not at all uncommon. The quake was centered in Virginia, but people reported feeling it as far north as Canada and all the way down into Georgia. An historic 5.8 magnitude quake struck this side of the U.S. If you live on the East Coast, chances are you felt the earth move under your feet earlier this week.

Quake map did you feel it