An earthquake rocked New Jersey and several surrounding states this morning, with reports of shaking coming in from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Newark, Delaware.
An earthquake rocked New Jersey and several surrounding states this morning, with reports of shaking coming in from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Newark, Delaware. Despite the affected area, it was a low to moderate-intensity event.
“The earthquake was rated as a 4.7 or 4.8 by the United States Geological Survey, which is enough to rattle the walls, but generally not produce severe damage,” explains Kenneth Miller, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers–New Brunswick and expert on New Jersey geology.
Unlike the west coast of the North American continent, where powerful earthquakes are triggered along strike-slip faults where the rock masses slip past one another, seismicity on the east coast is linked to old faults, often predating the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, squeezed together.
