Georgia Earthquake Recorded on a Huntsville Seismograph

Steve Jones is a local amateur seismologist; he wrote the following article for Valleywx.com to give us some insight on the earthquake that occurred near Trion, Georgia:

Though by no means a significant seismic event when judged by global standards, a magnitude 2.0 earthquake detected last evening near North Alabama demonstrates that small-scale seismic activity can yet be seen from time to time in our local area:

The small magnitude 2.0 quake was registered at 02:02:00 UTC (9:02:00 pm Wednesday evening) in northwestern Georgia, at a location approximately 110 km (68 mi) from Huntsville. The quake had a focus depth of some 13.7 km (8.5 mi) beneath the earth’s surface. This location is part of the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone, said by the USGS to be “one of the most active earthquake areas in the Southeast.”

The initial P waves from the quake were seen to arrive in Huntsville some 19 seconds after the quake occurred, followed by the initial S waves at +32 seconds. Owing to the quake focus depth and small event magnitude, no surface wave response was seen in Huntsville.

(Visit Steve’s site Alabamaquake.com for more information on reading the seismogram and what the different types of waves are!)

The local seismogram and epicenter location map have been posted on the AlabamaQuake website at Alabamaquake.com, on the “Huntsville Seismograms” and “Recent Earthquake Maps” pages, and these images have also been attached to this email.