‘Unusual’: Earthquake felt in Mass. was biggest to rattle region in decades, local scientist says

there are lots of earthquakes that have been in this part of New Jersey we had a magnitude 4.8 earthquake that was centered in the west central part of the state almost Due West of of uh Manhattan and New York City and it was felt all over the New England region and also felt down to Washington DC and Baltimore and past there uh that area magnitude 4.8 damage starts around magnitude 5 so this is a a significant earthquake but I wouldn't expect much of any damage 4.8 is relatively unusual the largest magnitude normally in a given year is about a 3 3.1 3.2 uh the last time we had an earthquake that was this large or a little bit larger was actually in 2002 when there was an earthquake in Northern New York state that was a 5.0 people very near the epicenter would would hear a loud Rumble Roar and would feel the shaking very strongly probably for 10 or 15 seconds further away it would be a more mild shake that again would last about 15 seconds I've seen reports from um like Toronto and and Niagara Falls uh up through Maine in the north and certainly down into the uh Carolinas in the South so the earthquake was probably about oh maybe three two and a half to three miles below the surface of the Earth and that's pretty typical for this area most of our earthquakes in in New Jersey and in Southern New England are between the Surface and about six or seven miles below the surface so um on a worldwide basis that would be considered a very shallow earthquake and so if you're very close to the epicenter you get a pretty good shake from it the shaking was weaker initially and then the strongest shaking came in about 40 seconds later and this would be the shaking that people would have felt here in the Boston area now not everyone felt it I didn't feel it here at Weston Observatory but we on Rock the people who would tend to feel the earthquake would be the ones who would be on like soft soil areas like some of the landfill areas in Boston and and in some of the river valleys like the sbur River Basin those people would be more prone to feel the shaking an earthquake of this size about 15 or 20 minutes for the waves to die off but that shaking is too weak for us to feel somewhere in New England there's a felt earthquake about 3 to six times per year most of them are very fall small just felt locally to get to be of this size that's probably once every 20 or so year earthquake