Another quake, likely an aftershock, shakes the Garden State near the site of the April tremors
The epicenter appeared to be about 15 miles from the magnitude 4.8 at Whitehouse Station that rocked both the the New York City and Philadelphia metropolitan areas on April 5.
A minor earthquake with an epicenter not far from the more significant quake in April shook parts of northern New Jersey early Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
It registered as merely a magnitude 2.2, but it was one of several minor tremors that USGS has recorded in July in the same area of Hunterdon County. The epicenter was about three miles from Califon.
The world is not ending, the agency said.
The recent shakings “are almost certainly aftershocks of the larger earthquake” on April 5, said Thomas L. Pratt, a USGS research geologist. He said there were more than 170 aftershocks, adding, “most of these were too small to be felt.” (That’s assuming their bodies aren’t equipped with ultra-sensitive USGS devices.)
“This is not unusual,” he said, “as earthquakes often have aftershock sequences that last for months or even years.
“I expect that there will continue to be small earthquakes in the area for the remainder of the year. It is extremely rare that these would be foreshocks to a larger, damaging earthquake, but it is not impossible.”
A magnitude 2.0 was recorded in Ocean County on July 6, but that one also was “not unusual,” Pratt said. “Small earthquakes like that routinely happen in the Eastern United States. We get several per day.”
No injuries or damage have been reported, and chances are most people haven’t felt a thing.
The epicenter of Wednesday’s quake appeared to be about 15 miles from the magnitude 4.8 at Whitehouse Station that rocked both the New York City and Philadelphia metropolitan areas on April 5.
USGS said it had received more than 180,000 reports from people who felt that one, and more than 12,000 when a magnitude 3.7 tremor was detected about 6 p.m. April 5.