When you think about earthquakes you think of California, not the Texas Panhandle.
But a tremor got the attention of some folks in Roberts County Monday night.
When the earth moves, it can be a daunting experience, especially if it's somewhere you don't expect to feel one. Like on the high plains of Texas.
Faults in the bedrock shift and cause the earth to shake.
The ones in our area may not be as epic as the San Andreas Fault, but they are there. AC Geology Professor, Richard Hobbs told us, “Everywhere there are faults of some type, of some size. We have numerous small faults around associated with, there's a buried mountain range north of town called the Amarillo Uplift, of the Amarillo Mountains.”
Usually the earthquakes in the panhandle are too weak to be felt.
The one that shook Miami was a 3.8 on the Richter Scale, which is a little bit stronger than usual, but still weak. Hobbs said, “Even with a 3.8 that's considered a very minor earthquake, and to really feel it you'd have to be pretty close to the epicenter.”
The Kee family was close enough to Monday's tremor to be able to feel it shaking their house. Rebecca Kee talked to us about what they experienced, “I was sitting in the recliner with our son trying to get him to sleep and i felt like the recliner was on a washboard,” she continued, “my tea cart started rattling and the windows started rattling and the windows started to rattle and my husband came running out of the bedroom and grinned real big and goes we were just in an earthquake, and I said I know.
The Panhandle usually sees two or three earthquakes a year, and there's nothing unusual about them, and the experts we spoke to said they're nothing to worry about, because they're not strong enough to cause damage.
