‘Light magnitude’ earthquake hits Claiborne County

Published 5:47 pm Wednesday, April 3, 2024

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Yesterday a threat of tornadoes, today, hit with an earthquake.

A light magnitude 1.8 earthquake hit the Kentucky-Tennessee border region in the early morning of Wednesday, Apr 3, 2024 at 3.32 a.m/ local time .The quake had a very shallow depth of 15.5 km (10 mi) and was too small to be felt by people.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “A sudden slip on a fault causes an earthquake. The tectonic plates are always slowly moving but get stuck at their edges due to friction. When the stress on the edge overcomes the friction, an earthquake releases energy in waves that travel through the earth’s crust and cause the shaking that we feel.”

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The area where this quake occurred has relatively few earthquakes. However, It has had at least 4 quakes above magnitude 4 since 1970, which suggests that larger earthquakes of this size occur infrequently, probably on average approximately every 10 to 15 years.