Third Earthquake Within One Week Rattles Greater Boston Area
A 2.0 magnitude earthquake was recorded on Sunday, Feb. 2, at 7:57 a.m. off the coast of Maine. It is the third quake in the same area during the past week.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), seismologists located the epicenter around the same area as a 3.8-magnitude earthquake that occurred on Monday, Jan. 27, approximately 8 miles southeast of York Harbor, Maine.
A 2.0 quake usually does not cause damage. Preliminary reports revealed that people felt the earthquake as far south as Boston and as far west as Concord, New Hampshire. No damage has been reported with Sunday’s quake.
In contrast, the 3.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday, Jan. 27, was felt across a broader area of New England, from Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Augusta, Maine. Residents in southern Maine reported feeling buildings and houses shake. This quake was followed by a second earthquake in the same general area around 3:15 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 29.
According to a Boston Herald report, the USGS predicted a 5% chance of at least one aftershock of a 3.0 magnitude or higher within the week following the 3.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday, Jan. 27.
While earthquakes are rare in the Boston area, they have occurred throughout time. “People in New England, and in its geological extension southward through Long Island, have felt small earthquakes and suffered damage from infrequent larger ones since colonial times,” noted information on the survey’s website.
Maureen Long, chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Yale University, said an earthquake close to 4.0 or slightly higher in magnitude in the U.S. Northeast “is not particularly common, but it’s not all that rare, either.”
