Above: A screenshot of the USGS's "Did You Feel It" map for an earthquake that struck northwest of Ottawa on Friday morning.
Update, 10:43am: The USGS has revised their initial 5.0 estimate for the earthquake down to 4.4.
A 4.4 earthquake that struck northwest of Ottawa, Canada at 9:43am on Friday, May 17 was felt far and wide.
Dozens of upstate New Yorkers are chiming in on the National Weather Service in Binghamton's Facebook wall to report feeling tremors. Reports of the quake are also flooding in on Twitter. A few:
#BREAKING -- @uscg now saying Ontario #earthquake is magnitude 5.0.Local media reports the quake was felt in #Syracuse and #Buffalo. #CNN
— Brian Carberry (@CNNBrian) May 17, 2013
Okay, now reports #earthquake originating just NW of Ottawa felt as far south #Sayre, PA.
— JoePasquarelli (@JoePasquarelli) May 17, 2013
At the time of this post, the U.S. Geological Service's "Did You Feel It" map for the quake, drawing from citizen reports, shows many reports from across northern and western New York State -- and in the Catskills region, a lone report from the Delaware County town of Andes.
Earthquakes that occur east of the Rocky Mountains are felt over a much larger area than earthquakes on the West Coast, the USGS informs us:
Earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains, although less frequent than in the west, are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).
Did you feel the quake? Let us know with a comment below, or tweet us at @watershedpost.
