Oklahoma: 26 Earthquakes Reported In 17 Hours

January 7th, 2016

Awake Goy

A staggering 26 earthquakes were recorded in Oklahoma over a 17 hour period

A series of small-medium earthquakes have rattled Oklahoma throughout Wednesday night, bringing a staggering 26 earthquakes to the region in just 17 hours.

A 4.7 magnitude tremor was followed just moments later by another 4.8 earthquake in an area 20 miles from Fairview, Oklahoma.

Weather.com reports:

The quakes struck at depths of 2.1 and 3.7 miles below the surface.

The twin earthquakes occurred at 10:27 p.m. CST Wednesday night and were felt from central Kansas to southern Oklahoma and the eastern Texas panhandle, including in Wichita, Kansas, and the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

KWTV said some of its viewers reported damage in their homes.

Seismogram near Paducah, KY nearly 500 miles away, shows the 4.8M #okquake. pic.twitter.com/X7HDoTi3Fm

— James Aydelott ☈☂❄ (@jamesaydelott) January 7, 2016

There were no reported injuries in either Majors or Woods Counties, near the epicenter of the twin quakes, according to newsok.com.

The 4.8-magnitude quake was the strongest in the Sooner State since the November 2011 swarm that included the state’s strongest on record, a 5.6-magnitude temblor in Prague on Nov. 6, 2011. It was the fourth strongest quake on record in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS).

ok-quakes-fairview-swarm

This was one of 26 separate earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater reported in Oklahoma within a 17-hour span from Wednesday evening through early Thursday afternoon. Twenty-four of those, including the two strongest quakes mentioned above, were clustered in southern Woods County. The other two were reported in the far northern Oklahoma City metropolitan area east-northeast of Edmond.

In 2015, 907 quakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater were reported in Oklahoma, up from 584 in 2014, according to KFOR-TV.

There were only 42 such earthquakes in the state in 2010 and 1 such tremor in 2005.

According to the USGS, there have been 29 such earthquakes already in 2016, the most recent being a preliminary magnitude-3.3 tremor near Fairview at 12:34 p.m. Thursday.