Two minor earthquakes rattled parts of Kentucky over the weekend. Seth Carpenter is a seismologist with the Kentucky Geological Survey at the University of Kentucky. He said the first occurred at 9:04 a.m. Saturday just south of Knoxville, Tennessee, and with a magnitude of 4.1, it was broadly felt in southern Kentucky.
“It was apparently a very strong event in the sense that the seismic waves propagated very well to many places there in the southern part of the state. The USGS reports that it was recorded as far north as Indiana and Ohio, actually.”
Carpenter said the second happened at 3:41 Sunday morning between Nicholasville and Lancaster.
“So let's say it was nine miles south of Nicholasville. Well, the earthquake itself was 20 miles deep, so the depth actually offsets the event more from those communities than where the epicenter shows up on the map.”
According to the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management, there are no reports of damage or injuries from either event. Carpenter said the two quakes are unrelated, and Saturday’s occurred in an area known as the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone.
