Living in Florida, we learn to roll with hurricanes, tornadoes, sinkholes, and floods; that’s simply the price we pay for sun, sand, and paradise. But earthquakes? No one ever warned us about that. Turns out, the ground here isn’t as steady as we like to think.
Just this week, things changed. On Monday, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck just off the coast of Cuba, and many people across Florida felt the tremors. A day later, another quake, a 4.3 this time, shook the same area.
The second quake hit Tuesday night, a little after 9 p.m., about 65 miles from Mantua, Cuba. It registered at a depth of about nine miles, according to the USGS. Both earthquakes happened in the same region and, according to seismologists, that’s pretty common. After a big quake, you often see aftershocks, smaller earthquakes that follow the main event.
The USGS says there have been at least three quakes along the Caribbean Plate in just the past 24 hours, but unless one hits a magnitude 6 or higher, folks in Florida probably won’t feel much.
That 6.1 earthquake on Monday wasn’t just a fluke, either. It’s one of the strongest ever recorded in the Gulf region. The only one that topped it was a 6.4 back in August 1959. After that comes this latest one, then a 5.9 in 2006, a 5.3 in 1992, and a 5.0 in 1978.
So, earthquakes aren’t as rare around here as we like to believe. Florida’s always had a shaky relationship with Mother Nature; it just picked up a new dance partner.
To check out the USGS Earthquake website, click here.
