{"id":59593,"date":"2025-12-03T13:03:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/59593\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T13:03:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:03:21","slug":"two-earthquakes-strike-new-york-minutes-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/59593\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Earthquakes Strike New York Minutes Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheThe epicenter of each earthquake is marked with an orange dot inside the colored, concentric circles. Image: USGS<\/p>\n

According to USGS, two weak earthquakes struck New York minutes apart, one just north of New York City, the other just south of the international border with Canada.<\/p>\n

The first earthquake struck at 7:16 pm last night near Massena, about 40 miles north of New York City. Striking at a depth of 5 km, the earthquake was rated a weak magnitude 1.6 event.<\/p>\n

The second earthquake struck near Chappaqua minutes later at 7:39 pm from a depth of 5 km too. The second earthquake was weaker than the first and was rated by USGS as a magnitude 1.5 event.<\/p>\n

According to USGS, earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.0 or less are rarely felt or heard by people, but once they exceed 2.0, as this event did, more and more people can feel them. While damage is possible with magnitude 3.0 events or greater, significant damage and casualties usually don\u2019t occur until the magnitude of a seismic event rises to a 5.5 or greater rated event.<\/p>\n

These latest earthquake joins other weak earthquakes that have struck recently in the eastern United States; they include New Jersey\u00a0<\/a>, Georgia\u00a0<\/a>, New Hampshire, <\/a>\u00a0North Carolina and Tennessee<\/a>.\u00a0 None of the earthquakes appear to be directly tied to the others.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>New York has seen the most number of damaging earthquakes in the northeast in the period 1678-2016. Image: NESEC<\/p>\n

According to the Northeast States Emergency Consortium (NESEC), New York is a state with a very long\u00a0 history of earthquake activity that has touched all parts of the state.\u00a0 Since the first earthquake that was recorded in\u00a0 December 19, 1737, New York has had over 550 earthquakes centered within its state boundaries through 2016. It also has experienced strong ground shaking from earthquakes centered in nearby U.S. states and Canadian provinces.\u00a0 Most of the quakes in New York have taken place in the greater New York City area, in the Adirondack Mountains region, and in the western part of the state.<\/p>\n

While many of the earthquakes to hit New York are weak like Wednesday\u2019s, some have been damaging. Of the 551 earthquakes recorded between 1737 and 2016, 5 were considered \u201cdamaging\u201d: 1737, 1929, 1944, 1983, and 2002.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>New York is no stranger to earthquakes; this map shows the epicenter of every earthquake from 1975 to 2017. Image: NESEC<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

While most of New York\u2019s earthquakes have been in the Upstate, New York City has also seen damaging earthquakes over the years. At about 10:30 pm on December 18, 1737, an earthquake with an unknown epicenter hit New York with an estimated magnitude of 5.2. That quake damaged some chimneys in the city. On August 10, 1884, another 5.2 earthquake struck; this quake cracked chimneys and plaster, broke windows, and objects were thrown from shelves throughout not only New York City, but\u00a0 surrounding towns in New York and New Jersey too.\u00a0 The shaking from the 1884 earthquake was felt as far west as Toledo, Ohio and as far east as Penobscot Bay, Maine.\u00a0 It was also reported felt by some in Baltimore, Maryland.<\/p>\n

\"While<\/a>While the U.S. West Coast is best known for their earthquakes, there is considerable earthquake risk elsewhere in the country. Image: USGS<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The epicenter of each earthquake is marked with an orange dot inside the colored, concentric circles. Image: USGS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1224,9,24,55,54,56,1230],"class_list":{"0":"post-59593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-earthquake","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-usgs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}