Earthquake Felt Across Eastern Massachusetts

[discocrisco01]

Source: CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) – Residents in much of Massachusetts reported feeling their homes shake during what preliminarily appears to have been an earthquake.

People on Cape Cod up through much of eastern Massachusetts began reporting the earthquake just after 9 a.m.

Read more: https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/11/08/massachusetts-earthquake-november-8/

[AllaN01Bear]

1. details of quake below

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?currentFeatureId=us7000cc4d&extent=5.61599,-103.00781&extent=57.61011,-15.29297

[MANative]

2. I was on the phone with my mom, who lives in MA

When it hit. She's in Dartmouth, about a mile from the epicenter of Bliss corner. She had a few things fall off shelves, but no damage. She was a bit disconcerted!

[Red Pest]

3. Felt it in South Kingstown, RI

We felt it here in southern RI. Dishes and HVAC ducts rattled and heard a low rumble like a heavy truck on the road, but no truck. I grew up in southern California and felt much stronger earthquakes there, including the 1971 San Fernando (Sylmar) earthquake (M 6.5), which shook me out of my dormitory bed at UCLA.

[electric_blue68]

13. I remember when there was one...

north of NYC.

The building I lived in our apt was in the back. The building was partly built on a steep hill with a jutting out "balcony" for access to the basement from parts of it. It was 7-8 stories above the street below.

This balcony created a sound chamber in which sounds below were magnified! Bouncing basket ball sounded more like loud gunshots, motorcycles - woah, trucks would really rumble and sometimes make the building vibrate a bit.

So I'm sleeping and dreaming. I'm going down w other people in an elevator. The elevator starts to shake side to side. I bolt up in bed as I'm waking up yelling "Earthquake"!"

I look around... nothing out of place but a vast dull rumble fading away. Maaaaybe the lightest vibration also fading don't quite remember. So... "Eh, a truck", I think, and go back to bed.

A few hours hours later I wake up. Flip on the R&R radio which was in the middle of "Shake, Rattle and Roll".
I have forgotten about waking up earlier.

They play at least one more song. Then the DJ says like, "oh, did you feel that!?! Blah, blah, blah...

😳 Omg, it really was an "Earthquake!". Holy shite!
How did my unconscious brain and body know!?!!
I'd never been in a earthquake! Lived in NYC all my life!
We do have some faults in the area but still.... never been one that I'd ever felt or heard about!

[Tracer]

4. Pretty far away from the quake, but

the table I was sitting at vibrated quite a bit.

[NutmegYankee]

5. In Connecticut too. nt.

[James48]

6. A 3.6 in Mass

Hardly anything.

There was a 4.7 two hours earlier in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia. Is that the adjoining tectonic plate?

[canetoad]

10. Nope

All on the North American plate.

[cstanleytech]

7. Not really surprised though to be honest since there are fault lines all over the world.

[Totally Tunsie]

8. Never felt a thing here in northern RI.

[DBoon]

9. Interesting article from Boston College on why quakes in Massachusetts

http://aki.bc.edu/why_quakes.html

Quick summary - nobody is sure, but it may be due to reactivation of very ancient faults, 100 million to 200 million years old.

[Throckmorton]

11. Heard it in SE Connecticut,

Local Nuke Plant (a former employer) is running through it's Seismic Event AOP's. Posted on local news that the clouds of black smoke was the emergency diesels being started as a part of the post-seismic event operability tests.

Glad I am retired, it would have just ruined my sunday.

[usajumpedtheshark]

12. Earthquakes have been recorded in New England since colonial days

From https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000cc4d/region-info

Earthquakes everywhere occur on faults within bedrock, usually miles deep, although some New England earthquakes occur at shallower depths. Most of New England's and Long Island's bedrock was assembled as continents collided to form a supercontinent 500-300 million years ago, raising the northern Appalachian Mountains. The rest of the bedrock formed when the supercontinent rifted apart 200 million years ago to form what are now the northeastern U.S., the Atlantic Ocean, and Europe.

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 England and Long Island are far from the nearest plate boundaries, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea. New England is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even the known faults are poorly located at the depths of most earthquakes. Accordingly, few, if any, earthquakes in New England 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 New England and Long Island is the earthquakes themselves.