Believe it or not, three small earthquakes rattled Georgia’s northern half this week.
The Peach State is no stranger to seismic activity, but it rarely gets any temblors strong enough to be noticed by many — and this week’s were no different.
The latest shake-up happened in Columbia County near Augusta when back-to-back earthquakes hit Wednesday evening. Just four days earlier and nearly 230 miles away, one hit Chattooga County in the state’s northwest corner.
All three were less than a 2.5 magnitude. At that level, you’d have to be paying close attention to feel any shaking.
The most recent temblors, a 1.9 followed by a 2.0 magnitude, happened between 5 and 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Grovetown, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s a small city roughly 15 miles from the South Carolina border.
The first struck at a depth of about 3½ miles, while the second was more shallow, at just a half-mile depth. The USGS received about a dozen reports of people feeling the shakes, but no damage was logged.
On March 29, the small northwest Georgia town of Trion recorded a 2.1 magnitude quake just before 4 a.m. The area is about 35 miles south of Tennessee.
That earthquake was recorded 3 miles deep with about 10 people saying they felt it, USGS data shows. No damage was recorded in that event, either.
While the East Coast is nowhere near as active as the West Coast in terms of seismic activity, the ground here does shake with regularity. In fact, more than three dozen earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater have been recorded within the state since 1974, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
Just this year, there have been nine temblors recorded across the state, five of which happened within the past 30 days, USGS data shows. None exceeded a magnitude of 2.6.
Georgia sits atop three seismic zones that encompass most of the state, according to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency. The most active region is northwest Georgia, which sits on the Eastern Tennessee Seismic zone. That area experiences about one magnitude 4.0 earthquake every five to 10 years.
A temblor of that level could shake small objects off shelves.
The most recent shaker of that intensity struck in 2018, when a 4.4-magnitude earthquake hit in an area near the Watts Bar Nuclear plant in east Tennessee. The plant is about 160 miles north of Atlanta, but many metro residents felt it. No damage was detected at the plant.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
