The earthquake which hit Scotland on Friday was “quite unusual”, a seismologist has said, because people could actually feel it.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) reported a 2.2 magnitude earthquake just outside Roybridge, near Spean Bridge, in the Highlands registering on seismometers at 9.29pm.
It was the second quake to hit the country in less than a week.
The earthquake, which had a depth of 7.5km, was described by Glenn Ford, the BGS seismic analyst on call at the time of the tremor, as “absolutely tiny” when compared with other quakes seen around the world.
“In UK terms, because we are a very low seismic area, we only perhaps get about 15 earthquakes a year of this size or greater, so it’s quite unusual in that respect,” he said.
“We get about two to three hundred earthquakes every year somewhere in the United Kingdom area, so the fact that this one was actually felt was unusual because approximately 90% of them are so small nobody actually perceives them.”
The night-time tremor was 17 billion times smaller than the earthquake which devastated Japan in 2011, said Mr Ford, who added: “You literally wouldn’t look up from your coffee or your newspaper for an earthquake that size in California or Japan.”
He added there were a number of factors as to why people felt earthquakes in the UK, including size and depth.
“The other type is time of day. Because people are not used to earthquakes in the UK, they put a small earthquake, because it could just be a small tremor, down to traffic noise, so if somebody is in a very remote area like this which occurred last night there is much better opportunity to actually feel it because they are nice and still, it was late at night, and probably in a sedentary position,” Mr Ford said.
BGS SEISMIC INFORMATION: ROYBRIDGE, HIGHLAND 19 NOVEMBER 2021 21:29 UTC 2.1 ML
LAT/LONG: 56.911° North / 4.740° West
GRID REF: 233.2 kmE / 783.3 kmN
DEPTH: 7.5 km
MAGNITUDE: 2.2 ML
LOCALITY: 6km ENE of Roybridge, Highland pic.twitter.com/pqynjpz7o8Advertisement— British Geological Survey (@BritGeoSurvey) November 19, 2021
“Normally if the roads had been busy or you’re near a motorway, you’d just put it down to traffic.”
A 3.1 magnitude earthquake was reported by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) on Tuesday just before 2am, with its epicentre some 11 miles north-west of the town of Lochgilphead, 88 miles north-west of Glasgow.
More than 30 people reported to the USGS that they had felt the tremor, with reports coming from as far as Edinburgh and Ballycastle in Co Antrim.
The agency said that quake happened 10km below the Earth’s surface.
As for the recent quakes in Scotland, Mr Ford said there had “obviously been a little bit of stress built up in that area”.
Data from the British Geological Survey shows between 200 and 300 earthquakes are detected in the UK every year, with tremors of between 3.0 and 3.9 magnitude occurring on the mainland once every three years on average.
