PERHAM, Maine — Editor's note: The video attached to this story was published Dec. 20, 2023.
A small earthquake was detected Thursday afternoon in Aroostook County. It's one of several that have been detected this week in Maine, Quebec, and New Brunswick.
The U.S. Geological Survey listed a magnitude 1.6 quake detected at about 4 p.m. several kilometers southwest of the small town of Perham.
About an hour earlier, a magnitude 2.5 quake struck in La Malbaie, Quebec, in the area of the Charlevoix-Kamouraska seismic zone, which is considered a seismically active area, though most of the quakes are detected under the St. Lawrence River.
According to Michigan Technological University, earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.5 or smaller are usually not felt but can be recorded by a seismograph, and millions of quakes that size are recorded every year.
However, the USGS offers a reporting system for anyone who may have felt the earthquake.
According to the Maryland Geological Survey, a cluster of six quakes smaller than 2.0 magnitude were detected in the area of Cumberland Bay in New Brunswick in the past week.
Small magnitude earthquakes in New England are relatively common, though they are much less frequent and intense than those along the western U.S., as New England is far from the nearest active tectonic plate boundaries.
According to the USGS, earthquakes east of the Rockies can be felt over an area "as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the West Coast."
The most recent earthquake to cause what the USGS considered "moderate damage" was a magnitude 5.6 quake that hit in central New Hampshire in 1940. The largest known earthquake detected as in recent times was a magnitude 6.5 that happened in 1638 somewhere in Vermont or New Hampshire, the USGS said in its tectonic summary of New England.