County experiences first earthquake since 1971
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Two earthquakes hit western Bernalillo County Tuesday morning, the United States Geological Survey and National Weather Service sa国际传媒官网网页入口 confirmed.
The initial earthquake鈥檚 magnitude was 3.28 and the magnitude of the second was 3.01 according to the & Mineral Resources dashboard.
There have been over 20 other recorded seismic shifts with a magnitude over 2.0 in the state over the past month. The initial shock detected west of sa国际传媒官网网页入口 on Wednesday was the highest in the past 30 days and the next tremor tied for third highest.
USGS recorded a lower magnitude than reported by the state agency reporting the initial tremor at 2.8 and the following at 2.5.
Both organizations clocked the tremors at 8:11 a.m. and 9:36 a.m.
The pair are the first earthquakes to hit Bernalillo County since Jan. 4, 1971, when a 4.7 magnitude earthquake struck around the intersection of Indian School Road and Carlisle Boulevard, according to the National Weather Service sa国际传媒官网网页入口.
Michael Anand, Meteorologist for the said in an interview with the Journal Tuesday that earthquakes are very rare but can happen in New Mexico.
Anand also called the earthquake Tuesday 鈥渂ottom of the scale for what the USGS measures for any tremors.鈥�
鈥淭here could be maybe some minor tectonic faults that are very, very minor under parts of New Mexico that might cause something like this. But more of the major fault lines are out towards California,鈥� Anand said.
Urbi Basu, seismologist for the New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, told the Journal that while a recorded earthquake is rare in this region, the place it occurred is an active tectonic region.
Basu explained that because of the volcanoes in the region and the Rio Grande River, the likely caused the earthquake.
The Rio Grande Rift 鈥� one of in the world 鈥� is a north-south running continental rift.
Basu said residents of the region shouldn鈥檛 be worried as it is uncommon for earthquakes in that region to cause serious damage. But she did say there is not much monitoring of seismic action in the region.
Basu encouraged residents who did feel the earthquake to fill out a .
Staff Writer Megan Gleason contributed to this report.
