Earthquake hits New Jersey, three days after weekend temblor, USGS says
A magnitude 2.7 earthquake was recorded in northern New Jersey Tuesday. Credit: USGS
A 2.7 magnitude earthquake rattled some people in the metro New York region Tuesday afternoon following a temblor that hit nearby days earlier, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The small earthquake struck at 12:11 p.m. Tuesday with an epicenter near Hillsdale, New Jersey, roughly 20 miles from Central Park in Manhattan. At 7.7 miles deep, the quake is considered shallow, according to the USGS but at least one seismologist said it is deeper than commonly seen in the region.
The USGS website has people reporting they felt it as far east as Riverhead, about 70 miles from the epicenter and as far north as upstate Millerton. Many witnesses are reporting they felt it hit in New York City.
Saturday's quake occurred a few miles away in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. Thomas L. Pratt, a research geophysicist at USGS, said it's not entirely clear whether Tuesday's jolt is an aftershock because the epicenter is about nine miles away from the earlier incident.
"There is a remote chance it could have been triggered by stress changes from this weekend's earthquake, but the latter is such a small earthquake it seems unlikely it would cause enough of a stress change to trigger the recent one," Pratt said in an email.
Folarin Kolawole, a structural geologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an interview he felt the tremor Tuesday while inside a coffee shop in Sparkill, in Rockland County.
"It felt like a bomb," he said, describing the confusion as everyone in the shop began looking around. He believes the quake may occurred on the same fault line near the earlier Hasbrouck Heights event and is an aftershock.
"Today's event may be an aftershock of Saturday's event or part of a sequence of dynamically triggered events,” Kolawole said, adding it deeper than last year's 4.8 magnitude quake.
Experts, including Stony Brook University geophysicist William Holt, said despite the close timing of the two events, there is no reason to panic.
"It seems like normal activity. Since 1950 there's been about 40 events of magnitude 3 or greater, over a 250 sort of radius from this area," Holt said in a phone interview.
In April 2024, residents in the metro New York area, including Long Island, were jolted by a rare 4.8 earthquake that occurred near Tewksbury, New Jersey. The two recent quakes occurred on a different fault line than the one in 2024, Kolawole said.
"One of the major takeaway messages from these events is that within the next one year, or maybe even less than that, we might get more of this magnitude 3 and 2," Kolawole said.
Lorena Mongelli has been reporting for Newsday since 2021. Prior to that, she covered breaking news at the New York Post.
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