EAST HAMPTON, Conn. — A 1.7 magnitude earthquake was detected about a mile outside of East Hampton on March 6, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
There were no reports of damage or injuries caused by the earthquake, which occurred at approximately 1:24 p.m. east of the town. The earthquake was the state’s first since one registered 1.2 on the Richter Scale on Oct. 15, 2022, less than a mile southwest of Stamford.
“It was like a sonic boom,” East Hampton resident Donna Lindstrom told the Associated Press. “It was a real short jolt and loud. It felt deep, deep, deep.”
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According to experts, earthquakes registering less than 3.0 magnitude cannot be felt by people. Only eight quakes of any size have been reported in the state over the past five years, the largest registering 2.2 magnitude in 2020.
Throughout the centuries, however, small seismic activity has often been heard in this area.
Connecticut’s largest recorded earthquake happened on May 16, 1791, in Moodus, a village in the town of East Haddam, fewer than 10 miles from East Hampton. Two quakes struck Moodus that day, knocking down stone walls and chimneys and damaging homes. History has it that the shocks could be felt as far north as Boston and as far south as New York City.
Native Americans named the village of Moodus as Machimoodus or Mackimoodus, meaning “place of bad noises” in the Algonquian language once spoken in the region. Today, the nearby Nathan Hale-Ray High School nicknames their athletic teams “The Noises”, to commemorate local history.
UConn Earth Sciences Professor Robert Thorson told the Associated Press that small but untypically shallow seismic displacements within an unusually strong, brittle crust cause the bangs and rumblings. The sound is amplified by rock fractures and topography.
“There is something about Moodus that is tectonic that is creating these noises there, and then there is something acoustic that is amplifying or modifying the noises, and we don’t really have a good answer for the cause either,” Thorson said, noting that the phenomenon creates “crunching noises.”
Thorson said the region is not in danger of a larger, catastrophic quake, as the rift faults that were present millions of years ago have been replaced with compressional stress, leading to the infamous “Moodus Noises.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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