Baltimore records two earthquakes in three days

Two earthquakes have been recorded in Baltimore in the past three days, a notable occurrence for a city that rarely reports quakes at all.

WBAL-TV reports that a 2.6 magnitude earthquake hit the area on Friday and another 1.7 magnitude earthquake hit shortly before 2 a.m. on Sunday.

No damage or injuries have been reported.

“These little ones like this are just a very quick jolt,” Dan Blakeman, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) told The Baltimore Sun.

“The 1.7 — if it turns out to have been felt, and it’s possible — it’d just be by people very close to where it happened,” Blakeman said.

“There could be a couple others here,” Blakeman continued. “A lot of times you’ll get small quakes like this and we’ll have maybe three or four of them and we just call it a swarm, basically because there’s no real big aftershock. There’s no way to predict if there will be another one or not.”

The Sun reports that the tremors from the earthquake on Friday were felt by many, but were small enough that some people in the area initially believed that a very loud truck had driven by or a large object had fallen from a high position. Even fewer people reported feeling the tremors on Sunday.