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The 4.8 earthquake in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, on Friday, April 5, 2024, is considered to be the worst earthquake in New Jersey on record since 2007.
Although the first known recorded earthquake to hit New Jersey was on November 30, 1783, according to The Northeast States Emergency Consortium, there have been several significant earthquakes that originated in New Jersey over the past several years. Like the April 5 earthquake, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake hit New Jersey on August 23, 1938 at 5:04 a.m.
Mark Behn, professor and director at the Weston Observatory at Boston College, told NJ Advance Media that while earthquakes are not as common in New Jersey and the East Coast as they are in places like California, the East Coast still often gets small earthquakes that can be between 1-2 magnitude.
But earthquakes that happen in New Jersey and the East Coast are often felt further away and by more people because of the types of rocks we have.
”It’s not just the magnitude that is important, when you think about what a person feels in terms of the shaking of an earthquake, it’s the combination of the magnitude, the location of the earthquake, the depth of the earthquake and the types of rocks the seismic waves are propagating through,” Behn said. ”The types of rocks we have tend to be more crystalline rocks that allow the shaking to be transmitted over a larger distance.”
It’s too early to tell why this earthquake was as large as it was, but it might be because a fault line from 200 million years ago was reactivated. New Jersey likely won’t get another big earthquake there immediately.
Instead North Jersey might feel aftershocks that are between 1-2 magnitude, and each aftershock will be smaller than the last, according to Behn.
Here is the full list of earthquakes with epicenters in New Jersey in the state’s history:
A note about the data: There are different types of magnitudes that all vary slightly from each other because they measure different parts of an earthquake, Mark Behn said. However, the Nuttli Magnitude is one of the most common magnitudes used to measure an earthquake.
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Katherine Rodriguez can be reached at krodriguez@njadvancemedia.com.
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