A 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook the East Coast Friday morning, as startled Bay State residents felt the “pretty rare magnitude” quake from hundreds of miles away.
The earthquake was reported at 10:23 a.m., with the quake’s center in northern New Jersey near Lebanon. Shaking was quickly felt in cities along the I-95 corridor, including in Boston where residents were taken by surprise.
What if residents in the future received an alert ahead of an earthquake? That technology, already deployed in more active quake zones like California and Japan, could be coming to the region down the road.
“A warning system is on our radar,” scientist Alan Kafka of Boston College’s Weston Observatory told the Herald after Friday’s quake.
“The Weston Observatory would like to have a warning system in New England,” he added.
With an earthquake warning system, an alert will go out to phones seconds after the quake happens deep below the earth’s surface.
“You’ll get an alert to expect shaking very soon, and to get under something as quickly as possible,” said Weston Observatory Director Mark Behn.
Residents on Friday did not get that heads up before the shaking started up and down the East Coast.
The National Weather Service’s Boston office quickly received several reports of an earthquake felt in southern New England.
“Preliminary reports from the @USGS indicate a M4.8 earthquake was recorded in north-central NJ,” NWS Boston posted.
Massachusetts emergency officials received multiple reports of shaking across the state.
“Our Local Coordinators are making outreach to communities to receive damage reports/requests for assistance,” MEMA posted. “In an earthquake: drop, cover, hold on.”
Meteorologist Matt Noyes said the quake will likely be remembered by many in New England.
“This is a pretty rare magnitude earthquake for this part of the country,” Noyes said in his summary of the quake.
“There are fault zones and fault lines that are here in the Northeast, so it’s not unheard of to have this happen,” he added.
Comments were flooding in on social media, as Boston-area residents reported feeling the quake.
One person wrote, “My apartment building just shook for a couple seconds. Anyone else feeling this in Boston???”
Meanwhile, flights were grounded at airports, including at JFK and Newark.
The FAA posted, “A 4.8 magnitude earthquake in New Jersey may impact some air traffic facilities in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Air traffic operations are resuming as quickly as possible.”
Shaking was widely felt from Maine to Washington, D.C., according to the United States Geological Survey.
“M4.8 is not large enough to cause damage, apart from light effects in the immediate epicentral region,” USGS Earthquakes posted. “It is large enough to be strongly felt, especially in the east, where earthquake shaking travels through the crust more efficiently than it does out west.”
Earthquakes are uncommon but not unheard of along the Atlantic Coast.
USGS Earthquakes posted about the Atlantic Coast region: “A zone one study called a ‘passive-aggressive margin’ b/c there’s no active plate boundary between the Atlantic & N. American plates, but there are stresses.”
