Did We Feel an Earthquake in Ocean County Last Night?

Did you feel the earth move last night? 

A reader emailed Patch this morning to report what he said felt like an earthquake around 1 a.m. in Barnegat, adding that others in Barnegat and Brick said they felt the same thing. 

So was it an earthquake? Maybe, according the U.S. Geological Survey. 

The U.S.G.S. Earthquake Hazards Program website shows 3.2 quake occurred at 6:39 p.m. yesterday in Louisa County, Va. – not far from the epicenter of the

U.S.G.S. geophysicist Amy Vaughan said it's very rare for such a small quake to be felt more than about 250 miles away, but not impossible. Since last night, she said, the Earthquake Hazards Program site has seen reports of people feeling tremors from as far away as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and even New York and Connecticut.

"I don't know if we could consider those credible, because it does seem too distant," she said, especially if the shaking was felt hours after the Virginia quake. But it's possible people were indeed feeling seismic activity, she said, and she encouraged people to report what they felt through the quake website.

"We do rely on these reports from people," said Vaughan.

Last night's quake occurred in the same Central Virginia Seismic Zone that produced the magnitude 5.8 quake last summer, which the U.S.G.S says was the most widely felt temblor in American history. People in nearly two dozen states and Canada reported feeling the quake, which caused moderate damage in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Because of the nature of the Earth's crust in the eastern U.S., geologists say even minor quakes are felt over a broad region. An earthquake east of the Rocky Mountains can be felt over an area up to ten times bigger than that of a similar one out west, according to the U.S.G.S.'s summary of the August quake.