NORTH MIDLAND, Texas – The United States Geological Survey, USGS, reported a bone-shaking earthquake of magnitude 3.5 on the evening of Monday, the 6th of September 2021, near Martin County Northwest Midland. Immediately afterward, numerous social media sites erupted with the ‘can you feel it’ phrase. The tremor is being described as one of the strongest shakes.
USGS, the first seismological agency to report the tremor, registered it to have occurred at around 10;05 PM northwest of Midland, about 10 miles north of Loop 250 with a depth of approximately 4.34 miles (Seven Kilometers). Residents from Gardendale to Grasslands West to Greenwood clearly felt the jolts as apparent from the comments and chats on the social networking sites.
This earthquake is reported to be the strongest after a 4.0 magnitude quake struck north of Stanton on December 2021. According to earthquaketrack.com, the earthquake in and nearby Midland was the fourth in the past seven days, the nineteenth in the last thirty days, and the 189th in and in the last 365 days. Alarmingly, the same website shows 1,033 earthquakes in the past 365 days around the Pecos region. The number is more than double the tremors felt in Los Angeles, California (391) in the same period.
However, perhaps slightly comforting news is that this tremor falls within the range of quakes that are ‘felt but only cause minor damages’. As per the educational site for seismologists, Upseis, a temblor with a magnitude of 2.5 to 5.4 does not cause huge damages.
Midland (population: 133,000) is 10 miles from the epicentre, Gardendale (population: 1,600) is 14 miles away, Odessa (population: 119,000) is 22 miles away, Stanton (population: 2,900) is 22 miles away, Andrews (population: 13,800) is 26 miles away, and West Odessa (population: 22,700) is 27 miles away. The tremor was probably not felt in Big Spring (population 28,900, 41 miles away) or Lamesa (population 9,400, 45 miles away).
Additionally, very similar tremors and quakes have also been reported from Alaska and its surrounding areas as well. The most recent one being an earthquake of magnitude 0.8 and a depth of 7 miles west of Salcha.
We hear of slight shakes and shocks every now and then near Midland. Dozens of earthquakes have been registered in a matter of just a month. However, we hope and pray that no big damage occurs as a result of these waves.
Residents are hereby encouraged to stay alert and share their feedback with the relevant authorities and on social media sites like Facebook to ensure that no point has been missed. We also encourage individuals to sign up for the USGS’s Early Warning/ShakeAlert® system as a precautionary measure. So far, no known warnings have been released but staying up to date, alert, and ready for any situation is the key to minimizing damage caused by any natural disaster.
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