Friday, 27 Dec 2024

Small Earthquake Hits Just North of New York City

A minor earthquake rumbled through parts of Westchester County in New York early on Friday, with tremors reportedly felt in New York City and towns in northern New Jersey. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The earthquake, which had a preliminary magnitude of 2.2, occurred around 1:50 a.m. about a mile south of Hastings-on-Hudson, a village of about 8,000 people, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. Hastings-on-Hudson is about 20 miles north of New York City.

The U.S.G.S. received more than 200 notifications from people, mostly within 15 miles of the epicenter, who reported that they had felt the earthquake in Hastings-on-Hudson and in surrounding towns, from Closter, N.J., which lies across the Hudson River, and south to Bronxville and Yonkers. A few people reported feeling the earthquake in parts of New York City, including in the Bronx and in Inwood and the East Village in Manhattan.

Small earthquakes are not uncommon in the area, and those measuring less than magnitude 2.5 are rarely felt. A man who picked up the phone at a diner in Hastings-on-Hudson said he had slept through it.

“I wouldn’t say it would be damaging at all but they do get felt in the Northeast,” Randy Baldwin, a U.S.G.S. seismologist, said. “Of course in a big metropolitan area you have people awake at 2 in the morning.”

In February, a magnitude 3.8 earthquake struck near West Seneca, N.Y., a suburb southeast of Buffalo. On April 23, a magnitude 3.6 quake rattled residents in Adams Center, a small town more than 200 miles north of New York City. That earthquake was followed by about 10 aftershocks.

“These are just random little quakes. They happen,” Mr. Baldwin said. “They are just scattered all over so you don’t have real defined fault zones, like you might have in California that have been active.”

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