Residents of central New Jersey were surprised Friday morning by a small earthquake.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says a magnitude-2.7 quake struck around 3:41 a.m. centered 2 miles north of Bernardsville, NJ. The quake had a depth of 3.5 miles.
“In the middle of the night we both looked at each other and said what the heck was that?,” resident Danielle Carlson told CBS New York.
“Kind of just like a thunder clap, like a rumble. I woke up because the windows were shaking,” resident Tom Wood added.
The USGS said there was no damage and quake of that magnitude usually does not show damage. The agency added that quakes usually hit the region every two to three years, although the last quake to strike the area was in December 2014.
One resident said that she knew something was coming because of her dog’s strange behavior.
“The dog was pacing back-and-forth, very neurotic, she’d never been like that before,” Ruth Levin told NJ.com. “She was frightened and stayed next to me all night.”
The USGS admitted there is anecdotal evidence dating back millennia of animals acting in a strange manner hours or weeks before an earthquake.
The last 24 hours have shown active seismic activity in the Midwest and on the West Coast.
A significant magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck Oklahoma Monday afternoon near the town of Cherokee, OK. The shaking of the quake was reported outside the Sooner State in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Texas.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) also reported a second quake striking near Pawnee, OK about half an hour later with a magnitude of 3.2. Then a few minutes after the Pawnee quake, a second quake struck in the area of the Cherokee quake that measured 3.7 on the Richter scale.
The USGS said all the quakes were around three miles deep.
Local officials said there were no injuries or significant damage from the quakes.
In San Francisco, a magnitude 4.0 quake struck the San Francisco area on Tuesday.
The USGS says the quake struck around 2:30 a.m. near Fremont, or 35 southeast of San Francisco. The quake struck at a depth of 5 miles.
No injuries or significant property damage was reported in the Fremont quake.
The Fourth of July weekend had more than fireworks shaking things up in Utah, Oregon and Alaska.
Oregon residents started their day out in an unusual way when a 4.2 magnitude quake struck around 8:42 a.m. Saturday. The quake was centered about 12 miles east of Eugene.
Officials from the Lane County Sheriff’s office and the Oregon Department of Transportation reported no damage being reported. Residents say that the quake caused some shaking of homes, pictures to fall off walls and wood piles to shift.
In Utah, a 4.0 magnitude quake struck around 10 a.m., 1 mile south of Panguitch or 200 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Panguitch Fire Chief Dave Dodds told the Deseret News the quake lasted between three and four seconds but caused no major damage.
Alaska was the most shaken up with weekend quakes.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported Alaska was shaken by two quakes within one minute.
The first, a 4.9 magnitude quake, struck around 4:49 p.m. about 24 miles southwest of Talkeetna. The second quake a minute later in the same area was reported at magnitude 5.1.
Also, the Arctic community of Kaktovik in the Arctic Ocean reported a quake around 11:26 a.m. that measured 4.6 according to the USGS.
At least four people are dead and the toll is expected to rise after a 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck the Xinjang region of China.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake took place in one of the “most seismically hazardous regions on Earth” and centered the quake 59 miles southeast of Yilkiqi, China.
“If many people are gathered in one place during an earthquake, it can lead to a serious disaster, but in this case, there were relatively few people so it isn’t so serious,” China Earthquake Networks Center researcher Sun Shihong told state broadcaster China Central Television.
Dozens are reported injured by multiple sources and the government reported thousands of homes and buildings in the region were damaged or destroyed.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs put the number of damaged homes alone at 3,000.
Over 1,000 tents are being sent into the region to provide temporary shelter for families who have lost their homes.
Scientists are trying to explain a 3.3 magnitude earthquake that struck 13 miles southeast of Battle Creek, Michigan Wednesday.
The quake was recorded 20 miles from the epicenter of a 4.2 magnitude earthquake that struck on May 2nd, the strongest recorded in Michigan in 67 years.
The Wednesday quake was far enough apart from May’s quake that scientists say it’s not an aftershock of the first. Apparently there are two separate fault lines in the region. The first quake revealed a fault line that had only been previously speculated by scientists but had not been proven.
“After the May event, I suspected we wouldn’t see another event, so I was a bit surprised by this one,” said Harley Benz, a seismologist with U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “What more surprised me is that they weren’t in the same locations.”
John Yellich of the Michigan Geological Survey concurred the two quakes were not connected.
“Two separate ones today. That’s what it looks like,” Yellich said. “Nothing unusual and the fact that we are getting two of them in the same area, it could be that it’s all of this movement just readjusting. It appears to be two different areas.”
Benz said the quakes could be “glacial rebound”, a conditions where land masses pressed down by tons of ice during Michigan’s last glacial period are starting to rise.
While some environmentalists were quick to related the quakes to the process known as “fracking”, Benz said that evidence shows the quakes are tectonic, or related to the natural movements of the earth’s crust.
A small Alabama county has experienced its 16th earthquake in just eight months.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported a 3.8 magnitude earthquake struck Greene County, Alabama around 1:44 a.m. The quake centered 12 miles northwest of Eutaw at a depth of 3.1 miles.
The county is the least populated county in the state. There has been a cluster of quakes in the Northwest portion of the county.
“We do know that clusters of earthquakes occur from time to time as part of normal seismic activity in our dynamic planet,” Sandy Ebersole of the Geological Survey of Alabama said to AL.com. “These clusters often go unnoticed, but are of interest to those studying geology and seismology as they can teach us more about fault movement, subsurface structures, and stress in the crust.
“These earthquake clusters or swarms are very rarely followed by a large magnitude earthquake.”
Monday’s quake was the strongest since November 2014.
A major earthquake struck beneath the Hawaiian city of Volcano on Saturday evening.
The 5.2 magnitude quake was the strongest of 94 quakes that have struck the region in the last two weeks.
The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said that the quake caused no injuries and it doesn’t appear that any of the volcanoes are experiencing a major change in their activity.
“HVO monitoring networks have not detected any significant changes in activity at the summits or rift zones of Kilauea or other Hawaiian volcanoes,” HVO’s Scientist-in-Charge Tina Neal said.
Five aftershocks were recorded within an hour of the main quake with the strongest measuring magnitude 3.1.
The park is home to two active volcanoes including Kulauea, considered one of the world’s most active.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake did not cause a tsunami in the region.
Small earthquakes and changes in the level of the lava lake are causing concern for scientists monitoring Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.
“Activity at the summit of Kilauea Volcano continues to change, as shown by a pronounced drop in the level of the lava lake within Halema’uma’u Crater, a change in the summit area deformation pattern, and the concentrated earthquake activity in the southern part of the caldera and upper Southwest Rift Zone” spokespersons with the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a recent press release.
The pressure inside the volcano is to the level that an eruption is possible. Sensors monitoring the ground show that there is deformation in the surrounding rock.
“The magma storage system within Kilauea is highly pressurized at this time, and future changes in the location of unrest, and the potential for eruption could unfold quickly (in days to hours),” said spokesmen with the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
But it’s not just Kilauea that’s becoming a focus. Mauna Loa is also showing activity that indicates magma is on the move.
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported that Mauna Loa is showing inflation in the Southwest Rift Zone and summit areas. There have also been minor earthquakes in the same area.
The scientists say the activity at Mauna Loa is lower than before eruptions in 1975 and 1984, however, the volcano has had periods of activity since 1984 without an eruption that has allowed pressure to continue to build within the mountain.
The HVO said they do not know how much pressure is involved or how much pressure the surrounding rocks can take before magma would move to the surface.
A new report says that around 143 million Americans are living in an earthquake zone and that 28 million in the lower 48 are in danger of “strong shaking”by a quake.
The researchers attribute the record total to population migration with many moving to the earthquake areas on the West Coast that are known for their activity. The scientists also say a “change in hazard assessment”contributed to the expansion of zones.
The report shows nearly 20,000 schools are in the area that is considered a threat from earthquakes.
The last time FEMA estimated the number of Americans who could be impacted by a quake in 1994. That report stated only 75 million Americans were at risk. The study was conducted then by the U.S. Geological Survey, the California Geological Survey and FEMA.
The new report says that financial losses from damages to schools, hospitals and other emergency responder buildings could run over $4.5 billion per year. Up to 80% of that cost would be located along the West Coast.
“While the West Coast may carry the larger burden of potential losses and the greatest threat from the strongest shaking, this report shows that the threat from earthquakes is widespread,”said Kishor Jaiswal, the researcher who presented the findings.
The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed to CNBC that Oklahoma is seeing a massive increase in magnitude 3.0 or greater earthquakes over the last 7 years to the level that the state sees 2 quakes a day.
“We have a good record going all the way back to the 1970s of magnitude 3 or larger earthquakes. They increased throughout the central U.S. in 2009, but primarily in just a few states like southern Colorado, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma,” says Bill Leith, senior science adviser for Earthquake and Geologic Hazards at USGS, told CNBC. “Oklahoma is the most striking case, where the number of earthquakes is now at record levels.”
The USGS said that from 2008 through April 8th, 2015, a total of 1,063 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater were officially recorded in Oklahoma. This year there has been a total of 210 compared to just 91 over the same time in 2014.
Critics of the drilling process called fracking blame the quakes on the fracking process but quakes have been on the rise in Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado and Ohio according to the USGS which seems to counter the claims the Oklahoma quakes are related solely to fracking.
The quakes are causing another concern for the oil and gas industry above the people critical of the fracking process; storage of oil above ground. Cushing, Oklahoma is the major hub of oil pipelines in America and over $3 billion in crude oil is stored above ground in that area. A major quake that ruptures a tank could cause millions in damage to supplies and surrounding lands.
