7th earthquake in 2 weeks detected near same North Carolina town
CANTON, N.C. (WTVD) -- A seventh earthquake in the last two weeks has been detected in the same western North Carolina mountain town.
The quakes all happened within a couple miles of Canton.
The first happened on the evening of May 23. It registered a 2.8 magnitude. The most recent happened around midnight June 6 and registered a 2.5 magnitude.
The United States Geological Survey says quakes are not usually felt by people until they exceed 2.5 magnitude on the richter scale.
The strongest of the seven earthquakes reached 3.2 magnitude, and hundreds of people reported feeling that quake.
The seven recorded earthquakes
- May 23 at around 7:30 p.m. -- 2.8 magnitude
- May 25 at around 6 p.m. -- 2.2 magnitude
- May 25 at around 6:30 p.m. -- 2.4 magnitude
- May 25 at around 11 p.m. -- 1.8 magnitude
- June 4 at around 6 a.m. -- 3.2 magnitude
- June 4 at around 2 p.m. -- 2.2 magnitude
- June 6 at around 12 a.m. -- 2.5 magnitude
According to our newsgathering partners at the News & Observer, The Appalachian Mountains are not on an active tectonic plate boundary, however the area still has sporadic earthquakes due to old geologic fault lines
In addition, earthquakes tend to trigger other earthquakes.
"Even though the southern Appalachians are not currently at an active plate boundary, our tectonic history means that built-up stresses from time to time are able to be released along old faults from the building of the Appalachians, which happened hundreds of millions of years ago," Appalachian State University's Department of Geological Environmental Sciences wrote in a previous report.
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