The Canton area has now had seven earthquakes in just under a two-week period. The latest quake struck early Tuesday morning, June 6, just after midnight at 12:08 a.m.
The latest earthquake registered a 2.6 magnitude and was located in west Canton, in the same region the previous quakes registered.
The first quake happened on Tuesday, May 23 and registered a 2.8 magnitude. That was followed by a 2.2 on May 25 in the same area and another just after that registering a 2.4. To round out the May quakes, on May 26, a fourth and smaller one registered a 1.8 magnitude.
After a few days of quiet, another quake on Sunday, June 4, at around 6:09 a.m., this one registering a 3.2 then later that day, at around 4:35 p.m. a 2.2, both centered under 2 miles north of West Canton. According to the USGS, the source of the quakes was between 1.4 and 1.8 miles deep.
According to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, large, damaging seismic events are infrequent in the state.
“In California there are many active faults where large, damaging earthquakes occur frequently. In contrast, there are no active fault zones in North Carolina. Earthquakes are more frequent in the western part of our state, but statewide they are relatively small, random and scattered events,” the NCDEQ says online.
Historically, the United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 1527 shows that in 1916 there was a magnitude 5.2 earthquake near Skyland in Buncombe County. Damage descriptions from the earthquake include “Chimneys were thrown to the ground, windowpanes cracked and people rushed into the streets.”
The last damaging event was recorded in Henderson County on May 5, 1981, with a magnitude of 3.5.
Professor Kevin Stewart from UNC Chapel Hill's department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences spoke with News 13 on Tuesday, explaining a bit more about earthquakes in the Carolinas.
"Although these earthquakes are notable, they’re relatively small," he said. "These kinds of swarms can happen from time to time, and they aren’t necessarily an indication of a bigger one coming."
Stewart says earthquakes happen all the time but are often too small to feel, as the earth makes tiny adjustments along cracks, or fault lines, in the earth’s surface.
He cautions not to confuse these fault lines with the kinds that divide large tectonic plates. They aren’t the same thing.