Magnitude 3.8 NEW JERSEY
2003 August 26 18:24:18 UTC
Preliminary Earthquake Report
U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center
World Data Center for Seismology, Denver
Magnitude | 3.8 | ||
Date-Time |
Tuesday, August 26, 2003 at 18:24:18 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time Tuesday, August 26, 2003 at 02:24:18 PM local time at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones |
||
Location | 40.61N 75.11W | ||
Depth | 3.0 kilometers | ||
Region | NEW JERSEY | ||
Reference |
10 km (10 miles) SE of Phillipsburg, New Jersey 15 km (10 miles) SE of Easton, Pennsylvania 55 km (35 miles) NW of TRENTON, New Jersey 75 km (45 miles) N of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
||
Location Quality | Error estimate not available, held by USGS NEIC to another agency's solution | ||
Location Quality Parameters |
not available | ||
Source | Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York, USA |
EARTHQUAKES IN THE NEW YORK - PHILADELPHIA - WILMINGTON
URBAN CORRIDOR
Since colonial times people in the New York - Philadelphia - Wilmington urban corridor have felt small earthquakes and suffered damage from infrequent larger ones. New York City was damaged in 1737 and 1884. Moderately damaging earthquakes strike somewhere in the urban corridor roughly twice a century, and smaller earthquakes are felt roughly every 2-3 years. Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).
FAULTS
At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, often scientists can determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. New York City, Philadelphia, and Wilmington are far from the nearest plate boundaries, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea. The urban corridor is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few, if any, earthquakes in the urban corridor can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake. As in most other areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards in the New York - Philadelphia - Wilmington urban corridor is the earthquakes themselves.
|
Did You Feel It?
Theoretical P-Wave Travel Times Earthquake Information for NEW JERSEY Earthquake Information for PENNSYLVANIA Earthquakes: Frequently Asked Questions
|
NB:
The region name is an automatically generated name
from the Flinn-Engdahl (F-E) seismic and geographical regionalization scheme.
The boundaries of
these regions are defined at one-degree intervals and therefore differ from
irregular political boundaries.
More->