Seriously.
Okay, it wasn’t anything worth writing home about, just a little Magnitude 2.1, but hey, it happened!
The mini-tremor occurred around 1:30 this morning. It was picked up by six regional stations and the location was estimated to be just outside of Collins.
I reached out to Andy Reese at the University of Southern Mississippi, and he didn’t have a firm hypothesis as to the reason for the quake. He proposed a few potential situations – from equipment malfunction to a small, very localized quake, to (from my suggestion) the possibility of a small explosion.
I asked about the potential of an explosion because of the depth and small size of the quake. There is no other evidence to support such a thing.
He noted that some sort of equipment/estimation malfunction would be the most likely scenario if it were detected by just a single station. But this quake was felt by six.
The stations are located in Socs Landing, Pioneer, LA, Carrollton, AL, Lakeview Retreat, AL, Big Creek Wildlife, Hattiesburg, MS, Union, MS, and another station I couldn’t find listed on the USGS GSN and ANSS Stations list.
This is a weird quake…
The most intriguing part, that would normally lend credence to the malfunction hypothesis, is the earthquake is estimated to be very close to the surface.
Knowing what I know about geology and meteorology, I would hypothesize that some sort of brief earthflow or landslide would be the culprit for the small quake. But in this case, with no heavy rains recently and no specific meteorological reason to point to for a mudflow, landslide or otherwise, I can’t offer much of a hypothesis.
Some background
According to the USGS, there are a million of these strength of quakes around the world every year.
And the “Intensity” of the shaking for these very small quakes rarely extends out further than the epicenter itself. For this particular quake, you can see that there wasn’t much to be felt outside of the direct epicenter, either.
I’ve reached out to a few geologists around the country to get their take on things. I’m still waiting to hear back from a few others. When I do, I will update this post with the extra info! But hey, always cool to have geology happening right in our backyard!
