The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:50 PM
3.1 Earthquake Shakes East Tennessee Near Morristown
The tremor occurred at 6:32 p.m. at a depth of about 13.5 miles, according to the USGS. The epicenter was thought to be near the Grainger-Hamblen county line, northwest of Morristown and southwest of Bean Station.
Morristown residents on social media
reported feeling their homes shake. Residents of Rutledge, Russellville
and Jefferson City also said they felt or heard the quake.
No damage was reported to the USGS.
Roughly 900,000 low-magnitude earthquakes — quakes with less than a 3.0
magnitude — occur each year, according to seismographers at Michigan
Technical University. Those quakes are typically only felt by people
close to the epicenter.
Such tremors are common in East
Tennessee. The seismic zone — which stretches into northwestern Georgia
and northeastern Alabama — is one of the most active earthquake areas in
the Southeast, but it has not experienced a large quake, according to
the USGS.
The largest known earthquake in the region was a magnitude 4.6 quake
that occurred on April 29, 2003, near Fort Payne, Alabama, according to
the USGS. A magnitude 4.0 earthquake in the eastern U.S. can be felt as
far as 60 miles from the epicenter.