We Get Earthquakes In Missouri? Yes We Do! Did You Feel It?

I have family that live all over the country. Some on the West coast, some on the East coast, and the majority of my family live in the Midwest. Those who live on the East coast, especially in Florida and those states that are near the ocean, have to deal with hurricane season. Midwest...we seem to deal with tornados a lot. West coast...well they get earthquakes. I never thought about those in Illinois and Missouri. Maybe I should.

Growing up, this was an event we didn't have to deal with, or concern ourselves with. According to USGS.GOV, an earthquake is caused by a sudden slip on a fault. The tectonic plates are always slowly moving, but they get stuck at their edges due to friction. When the stress on the edge overcomes the friction, there is an earthquake that releases energy in waves that travel through the earth's crust and cause the shaking that we feel.

As you can see from the embedded Facebook post above, we had a small earthquake in Missouri. You can click on it for more info. It wasn't very big, and in our listening area, it would not have affected us at all. 2.5 magnitude isn't very much, and those in the area probably didn't even notice anything different. About a year ago, I wrote up an article about the World's Largest Earthquake Drill and you can read that HERE. In case you need to know how to respond if we have another one.

You can click HERE for the history of earthquakes that Missouri has had in the past. As I said, it never hurts to be prepared. Thankfully it doesn't appear that this small one that happened yesterday affected too many people.