Where was the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the UK and how does Stockton-on-Tees compare?
POWERFUL earthquakes in the UK are thankfully a pretty rare phenomenon, but they do happen. Hundreds of tiny tremors too minor to be felt or cause any damage hit Britain every year. Here are the movers and the shakers, and the ones that won’t wake you. When and where was the strongest earthquake ever recorded […]
POWERFUL earthquakes in the UK are thankfully a pretty rare phenomenon, but they do happen.
Hundreds of tiny tremors too minor to be felt or cause any damage hit Britain every year. Here are the movers and the shakers, and the ones that won’t wake you.
When and where was the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the UK?
The largest known British earthquake occurred in the North Sea, near the Dogger Bank in 1931, with a magnitude of 6.1.
It was 60 miles offshore but still powerful enough to cause minor damage to buildings on the east coast of England.
The most damaging UK earthquake was in the Colchester area in 1884, in which several people were killed and shockwaves were felt as far away as the Houses of Parliament.
While many of the stronger quakes in the UK are under the sea, like the earthquake which hit 100 miles off Scarborough in January 2017, some do happen on land.
In 2007 and earthquake in Kent registered as 4.3, with Folkestone the worst hit area.
In 2008, a 5.2 quake shook Market Rasen in Yorkshire, with tremors felt across the UK and as far as Netherlands, Belgium and France.
Structural damage was recorded in some areas, including one case where a chimney collapsed and injured a person in Wombwell, Barnsley.
In 2015, a quake measuring 4.2 hit Sandwich in Kent, with shockwaves felt as far away as Norwich 1oo miles away.
A 4.4 magnitude earthquake near Swansea, Wales, caused one cottage to collapse completely in February 2018.
Tremors were felt as far away as London, Cornwall and Liverpool as millions of terrified people experienced their homes and ground shaking.
In June 2018 a 3.9 quake rocked Eastern England and in July, 3.3 was felt in Surrey with Twitter users mocking the damage done.
Surrey was hit again with 2.4 quake in February and another in May 2019.
West Cornwall had its own quake on August 9, 2019, when residents felt their homes shaking and heard a loud boom “like a plane crash”.
Stockton-on-Tees suffered an earthquake in the early hours of 23rd January 2020; people were awoken from their slumber at the 2.8 magnitude tremor.
How often do earthquakes happen in the UK?
While hundreds of quakes actually happen here every year, only around 10 are strong enough to be felt at all – and many of these are very minor.
A magnitude 4 earthquake – strong enough to be felt but causing minimal damage – happens in Britain roughly every two years.
We experience a magnitude 5 – which can damage buildings – roughly every 10-20 years.
Research estimates that the largest possible earthquake in the UK is around 6.5, strong enough to destroy homes.
How likely is an earthquake in the UK?
According to experts, there are “super deep” fault lines below the Home Counties linked to the San Andreas Fault which causes huge quakes in California.
Some claim the UK is at an ever-growing risk of a big earthquake, with seismologists believing there may have been big quakes in Britain at some time.
Reports say the regions most at risk are Kent and the Home Counties, Essex, and Scotland – thanks to a major plate tectonic boundary between the Eurasian plate and the African plate.
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Where do quakes in the UK occur?
Most earthquakes occur on the western side of the British mainland, and there are hardly any in eastern Scotland and north east England or Ireland.
But the North Sea is an earthquake hot spot, as well as the Llyn peninsula in Gwynedd, North Wales.
Llyn was the location for the largest recorded onshore quake in the UK on July 19 1984, when a 5.4 magnitude tremor damaged buildings and injured several.
Two smaller quakes – measuring magnitudes of 4.0 and 4.3 – rocked the area in the following weeks.
According to the British Geological Survey, other areas hit by big tremors include Kintail in the north-west Highlands, Folkestone, Melton Mowbray and Longtown in Cumbria.
But these pale in comparison compared to major global earthquakes that cause a devastating loss of life.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti left at least 222,570 people dead after it struck in 2010.
Nearly ten years on, the impoverished Caribbean country is still recovering from the horrendous impact.