An earthquake close to the Maine coast has rocked apartments across five East Coast states.
The ‘notable’ and ‘unusual’ 3.8 magnitude quake shook the Pine Tree State at 10.22am on Monday, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Official graphics from USGS show the quake could be felt as far north as Sanford, Maine, all the way down to Hartford, Connecticut, and as far west as Montpelier in Vermont.
Boston residents located at least 60 miles south of the danger zone said they felt the rumbles. ‘Whole apartment just shook – earthquake in Boston?’ one concerned local wrote on X at 10.24am.
‘Yes just felt it,’ another Bostonian agreed, while a resident living in Quincy, a city even further south, said their apartment shook too.
The earthquake epicenter was in the Gulf of Maine, between four and 13 kilometers south-east of York Harbor, according to the USGS website.
People in the bordering state of New Hampshire also felt the tremors. ‘OMG New Hampshire just had a very noticeable earthquake!’ one person wrote on X.
‘Usually it happens when I’m sleeping or it’s nothing noticeable but everyone on my teams meeting all across NH and southern Maine felt it, it was pretty strong, and it lasted a good minute!’
The NH native added that the quake ‘felt like a train going by’. ‘We have a new development going in next door, I thought it was one of their trucks for a second. I was surprised how long it lasted.’
Earthquakes on the East Coast are ‘unusual’, according to USGS, and they tend to be felt over longer distances.
‘Moderately damaging earthquakes strike somewhere in the region every few decades,’ the website reads.
‘Earthquakes in the central and eastern US, although less frequent than in the western US, are typically felt over a much broader region.
‘East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast.’
An earthquake close to level four in magnitude on the Richter Scale, like the one in Maine, ‘typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred’, per the USGS.