How Common Are Northeast Earthquakes?
Earthquakes in the Northeast are normally too little to feel, however bigger temblors like the 4.8 magnitude quake in New Jersey aren’t unheard of
By Gary Solar & The Conversation UnitedStates
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The following essay is reprinted with authorization from 
The Conversation, an online publication covering the newest researchstudy.
It’s uncommon to feel earthquakes in the U.S. Northeast, so the magnitude 4.8 earthquake in New Jersey that shook structures in New York City and was felt from Maryland to Boston on April 5, 2024, drew a lot of concerns. It was one of the strongest earthquakes on record in New Jersey, though there were no instant reports of significant damage. We asked geoscientist Gary Solar of Buffalo State University to discuss what triggers earthquakes like this.
What triggers earthquakes like this in the US Northeast?
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There are lotsof ancient faults in the rocks in that part of New Jersey. They extend through Philadelphia and along the Appalachians, and the other instructions, past New York City and into western New England.
These are fractures where gravity can cause the rock on either side to slip, triggering the ground to shake. There is no active tectonic plate movement in the location today, however there was about 250 million to 300 million years back.
The earthquake activity in New Jersey on April 5 is comparable to the 3.8 magnitude earthquake that we skilled in 2023 in Buffalo, New York. In both cases, the shaking was from gravitational slip on those ancient structures.
In brief, rocks slip a little on high, preexisting fractures. That’s mostlikely what occurred in New Jersey, presuming there was no manufactured trigger.
How hazardous is a 4.8 magnitude earthquake?
Magnitude 4.8 is quite big, however it’s mostlikely to have just small results compared with big ones that cause significant damage and loss of life.
The scale utilized to procedure earthquakes is logarithmic, so each integer is a element of10 That implies a magnitude 6 earthquake is 10 times bigger than a magnitude 5 earthquake. The larger ones, like the magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Tawian a coupleof days earlier, are associated with active plat