Four earthquakes rattle Tennessee less than 10 hours apart, USGS reports
At least four earthquakes reaching up to 2.4 magnitude rattled middle and eastern Tennessee on Thursday night and Friday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.
The other quakes ranged from 1.5 to 2.3 magnitude, according to the USGS.
The first quake reaching 2.4 magnitude began at 7:27 p.m. about 10 miles outside of Pulaski, Tennessee — just north of the Alabama border, the USGS reported. It was about seven miles deep.
Another earthquake with a magnitude of 2.3 rattled seven miles from Rockwood, Tennessee, at 8:55 p.m., according to the USGS. Four people, including one 88 miles away in Kentucky, reported feeling it.
Two minutes later, a 1.7 magnitude quake struck roughly the same spot, USGS reported.
The earlier 2.3-magnitude quake was about 14 miles deep, but USGS reported its sister quake was closer to 15 miles deep.
The last earthquake — a 12-mile deep 1.5 magnitude quake — shook four miles from Sweetwater, Tennessee, at 5:41 a.m. Friday.
Sweetwater and Rockwood are divided by the Watts Bar Lake, a reservoir of the Tennessee river. The two towns are about 22 miles apart and are home to about 5,000 residents each.
The latter three quakes were all southwest of Knoxville, between 30 and 50 miles from the North Carolina border.
Magnitude measures the energy released at the source of the earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey says. It replaces the old Richter scale.
Quakes between 2.5 and 5.4 magnitude are often felt but rarely cause much damage, according to Michigan Tech. Though likely to register on a seismograph, anything less than 2.5 is seldom felt.
