{"id":557590,"date":"2026-04-01T05:13:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/557590\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T05:13:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:13:19","slug":"gulf-of-mexico-shakes-from-magnitude-3-9-earthquake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/557590\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulf of Mexico shakes from magnitude 3.9 earthquake"},"content":{"rendered":"

An earthquake registering 3.9 on the Richter scale was reported in the central Gulf of Mexico<\/a> Sunday night, but it was small enough and far enough from any human activity that no damage has been reported. In fact, the quake<\/a> probably caused a bigger stir on social media than it did in the ocean.<\/p>\n

The earthquake occurred at 9:22 p.m. CT, according to the U.S. Geological Survey<\/a>, and reached a depth of 10 kilometers. The epicenter was approximately 220 south of Venice, La., NOLA.com reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The quake was far too weak to trigger a tsunami, Florida-based meteorologist Nick Lilja<\/a> of NickelBlock Forecasting<\/a> noted on Facebook, adding that it had occurred “well away” from any known oil-and-gas drilling activity. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Cadastre map<\/a> seems to confirm this assertion.)<\/p>\n

“While not a typical ‘fault’ on the surface like you would see in California, there are deep faults in the northern and central Gulf underneath the sediment layer of the ocean floor,” Lilja wrote. “These types of quakes are not a ‘sign’ of anything unusual; they simply have a longer return period on occurrence.”<\/p>\n

On the Richter scale<\/a>, a 3.9 is just on the other side of detectable activity. Depending on their proximity to major population centers, the most destructive quakes<\/a> usually register at least a 7.0. The January 1994 quake centered near Northridge, Calif., which resulted in 60 deaths and an estimated $44 billion in property damage, was a 6.7.<\/p>\n

The largest earthquake reported in the Gulf to date occurred in September 2006, when a quake registering 6.0 and centered about 260 miles southwest of Tampa, Fla., was felt by nearly 3,000 people, the USGS reported. That one “rattled our trailer pretty good,” a resident of the central Florida community of Pedro told NBC News<\/a> at the time, but otherwise no damage was reported. Another quake, registering a 3.3<\/a>, was reported about 130 miles southeast of Gulfport, Miss., in June 2023.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s quake did bring out the jokes, though.<\/p>\n

On Facebook, the Tampa, Fla.-based Pinellas Podcast<\/a> cut to the chase, asking, “Did your beer shake?” The Gulf Coast Severe Weather & Tropics<\/a> page\u2014which takes a, shall we say, unfiltered (or perhaps unhinged) approach to meteorology\u2014offered an alternative interpretation: that the quake might be a sign of things to come.<\/p>\n

“That was the Gulf cracking its knuckles like a villain about to clock in for hurricane season,” it wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An earthquake registering 3.9 on the Richter scale was reported in the central Gulf of Mexico Sunday night,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[247472,138622,192,79],"class_list":["post-557590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-chrongulf","tag-chronstaff","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}