A weak earthquake struck eastern Canada near the U.S. / Canadian border this morning, bringing a little shake to eastern Maine. According to USGS, the earthquake struck in the waters just off-shore Deer Island in Canada’s New Brunswick province, just 8.7 miles northeast of Eastport, Maine. The weak magnitude 2.0 event struck at a depth of 7.7 km at 4:15 am this morning, Eastern Time.
According to Canada’s Earthquakes Canada, the Canadian equivalent of USGS, and a unit of Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, there have been 9 recorded earthquakes in New Brunswick in the last 30 days. The strongest in the last 30 days was a magnitude 2.5 event which struck on May 5 just southwest of Saint-Paul.
Maine is also no stranger to earthquakes. While this earthquake struck just outside of Maine, quakes do happen from time to time in the state too. One of the strongest earthquakes in recent times was a magnitude 4.5 event on October 16, 2012 in East Waterboro, about 13 miles northwest of Saco.
According to the Maine Geological Survey with the Department of Conservation, seismic activity in Maine is typical of the Appalachian region of northeastern North America. “There is a low but steady rate of earthquake occurrence,” they report, adding that “The earthquakes are presumably caused by modern stress being released occasionally along zones of weakness in the earth’s crust, but a more specific cause for the earthquake activity is not known.”
