New Madrid Fault

I did some research to count the number of earthquakes in this region for the past nearly 24 years and the number is mind-blowing.

The week is off to a shaky start along the New Madrid Fault in Missouri. There's been a sudden uptick of quakes with 4 being reported in just a few hours time and nearly 20 over the past 7 days.

It's been one of the most active weeks seismically speaking in the Midwest of 2023. Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and even parts of Tennessee have seen at least 49 earthquakes in just the past 7 days.

I've learned over the years that some of the weirdest events have a reason for happening if you're willing to dig deep enough to figure out why. That's true for a series of recent earthquakes in Illinois that seemed to happen in unexpected places. There's a USGS map which shows it's not weird at all.

Well, this was much larger than usual. One of the largest quakes of 2023 has hit the New Madrid Fault in Missouri late Friday night and has reportedly been felt by hundreds.

There was no damage reported, but thanks to the New Madrid Fault, Missouri was just hit by one of its biggest quakes so far in 2023 and it was reportedly felt by dozens in the area.

Earthquakes happen often along the New Madrid Fault in Missouri. Most of the time it's one or two every few days, but in the past month there have been mini-swarms totaling more than 30 in just the past 30 days. Oddly many of these have been felt, too.

Well, this was certainly a new place for an earthquake in Illinois where earthquakes don't normally happen and definitely aren't normally felt. It happened late Saturday night according to the USGS.

There's been a sudden uptick of seismic activity in southern Missouri with over 42 New Madrid quakes being recorded in just the past 30 days.

If you follow earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault Zone, you know it's not unusual to see a quake every few days or so. It is a bit unusual to see more than a dozen quakes over the span of just a few days in Missouri though. That's what's happened this week in the southern part of the Show Me State.