Earthquakes hit North Yorkshire: Report

Minor Earthquakes hit North Yorkshire Monday night, weeks after a similar small tremor hits Cumbria.

Philip Brennan | PhilipBrennan.net | 4 January 2011:

Last night a small earthquake hit North Yorkshire in England. According to the British Geological Survey (BGS) it was a 3.6 magnitude quake.

The organisation’s seismology project leader, Dr Brian Baptie, told Sky News:

“We believe the earthquake was centred in North Yorkshire, just west of Ripon, round about the Yorkshire Dales region.”

Dr Aoife O’Mongain, also from the BGS, told the Press Association that the epicentre of the quake was six miles west of Ripon with a depth of almost four miles. She went on to add:

“It would have only lasted for a couple of seconds. At that strength, it is not likely that it would have caused any damage. People living in the vicinity may have felt their windows rattling as if a lorry was going past.”

The National Association of Radio-Distress Signalling and Infocommunications (RSOE) Emergency and Disaster Information Services (EDIS) web site records two tremors though, and not one. According to their alert map, two 3.7 magnitude quakes occurred within 5 milliseconds of each other – one at Belle Isle and the other at Ripon, both in North Yorkshire. The Belle Isle quake was at a depth of 10km, while the Ripon quake was at a depth of 11km. This could either be the same quake recorded at two different sites, or that these two quakes happened so close together that only one was counted.

Sources from today’s Guardian does suggest that there were two quakes, one immediately after another:

“…Staff at the Swinton Park Hotel in Masham, 10 miles from the epicentre, felt the earth move. One 27-year-old man who did not wish to be named said there were two quakes.

“The first lasted three seconds or so and rattled everything on the shelves.

“Seconds later there was a second quake, shorter this time. I thought, ‘That was an earthquake’, but then thought it could not have been – you don’t get earthquakes in Yorkshire …

“I used to live in California and I got quite used to quakes when I was there. We’d have them almost every day. This was pretty small by Californian standards but pretty strange for up here….”

Unlike the great quake of Ashford in 2004, and the Lincolnshire Quake in 2008 (5.2), no major damage was done and there are no known injuries either. Any aftershocks within the coming days in Yorkshire are unlikely, but if they occur will only be around 2.3 magnitude, which will be unnoticed by most people.

Two weeks previously there was another minor quake in Cumbria, in the north of England.

Sources:

The Guardian | Earthquake hits North Yorkshire

RSOE EDIS | Europe

The Telegraph | Earthquake hits northern England

The Independent | North of England hit by earthquake

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