PARK CITY – Thousands of people felt a magnitude 3.3 earthquake that struck six miles northwest of Park City at 11:21 on Monday morning.
Scott Ray, President of Park City Brewing, was one of them.
“Everything started, it did start shaking a little bit,” Ray said. “We could feel our desks, which were connected to the walls, we could feel those kind of shake a little bit. It did last for about, over ten seconds for sure.”
“We’ve had literally hundreds of reports of people who felt shaking or heard a noise or something like that,” Keith Koper, Director of the University of Utah Seismology Services said.
Those reports can be tallied through theUSGS in what is called a “felt report.”
The reports become a part of how scientists study earthquakes in Utah. “Turns out we can collate all those felt reports from all those people from all over the region, believe it or not we can actually learn things about the source mechanism of the earthquake,” Koper said.
On the Fox 13 News Facebook page, more than a thousand comments were added to the post about the earthquake.
“Felt it pretty good here in Deer Valley. Loud thud sound in walls followed by dining room table swaying,” Suzie Gordon wrote.
Marti Chambers posted that she “Heard it more than felt any shaking!”
“It’s almost more of a sound than a lot of shaking when have a small earthquake,” Koper said, explaining often the sound associated with the seismic wave catches the attention more than the shaking.
Catching a lot of attention is whether or not the tremor is an indicator a future earthquake is on the immediate horizon. Southern Idaho has experienced what’s called and earthquake swarm, with hundreds of small tremors over the past six weeks.
Koper says the quake in Summit County is not related to the swarm in southern Idaho and it is also not an indicator of any future large quakes.
