Feel a rumbling this morning? That was a 3.1 magnitude earthquake, centered 27 miles southeast of Asheville.
According to information from the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake took place at 6:07 a.m., was centered just north of Mill Spring and reached about 5 miles underground. So far, no damage has been reported from the quake.
A 3.1 on the Richter scale, the force was roughly equivalent to that of a large military bomb. Earthquakes in WNC generally tend to be of much less magnitude than those in the Western U.S., but are also felt over a wider area.
— David Forbes, staff writer
Thanks for reading through to the end…
We share your inclination to get the whole story. For the past 25 years, Xpress has been committed to in-depth, balanced reporting about the greater Asheville area. We want everyone to have access to our stories. That’s a big part of why we've never charged for the paper or put up a paywall.
We’re pretty sure that you know journalism faces big challenges these days. Advertising no longer pays the whole cost. Media outlets around the country are asking their readers to chip in. Xpress needs help, too. We hope you’ll consider signing up to be a member of Xpress. For as little as $5 a month — the cost of a craft beer or kombucha — you can help keep local journalism strong. It only takes a moment.
Earthquake in Asheville! Sounds like 2012 is coming….
Is this place safe??
Earthquake’s happen thousands of times a day all over the planet, too suggest that there is any other-worldly cause to geologic activity is asinine.
Yes, I have heard of 1.2 and 1.7, but never 3.1 on the Richter scale!
Perhaps a 3.1 is uncommon in human time, but not in geologic time.
so WNC sits on a huge fault line…not very shocking at all.
As bad as the economy is these days, be glad if you don’t have to be taking out payday loans to be patching drywall. Charleston, South Carolina, was hit by a minor earthquake last week that caused mostly minor damage. No homes were destroyed, and there weren’t major injuries as a result. Charleston isn’t known as an earthquake hot spot in the U.S. like California is, but quakes do happen there. The most recent one measured a 3.6 on the Richter scale. 3.6 isn’t a major event, but cleaning up after it is a royal pain in the neck. The history of the region has been that a small quake, like the one that just happened, is a usual precedent of a much larger one to come. An earthquake rocked Charleston in 1886 that killed upwards of a hundred people and cost millions to repair, and measured between 6.6 and 7.3 on the Richter. The Great San Francisco Quake of 1906, by comparison, was over 9.0 on the Richter. (A 10 has never been seen or recorded in the span of human history, and isn’t achievable by atomic blasts.) Earthquakes are tough to predict, because the only indicators that tell of one happening are apparent only right before the event. You can read the article called “Charleston Earthquake | Payday Will Be Spent Fixing Drywall”, on the payday loan news blog at personalmoneystore.com.