A small earthquake measuring 3.3 on the Richter Scale rattled eastern Connecticut this morning.
Reports indicated the quake struck near Plainfield, Connecticut at 6:36 a.m. No damage was reported, but residents in Connecticut and Rhode Island posted on social media that they’d felt the shaking from the quake.
According to the National Weather Service, it is the second small earthquake in eastern Connecticut in the last four days.
Small quakes are not uncommon in the area. While larger, damaging quakes have been known to occur in the Northeast, they are exceedingly rare. According to the U.S. Geological Society, the largest known New England earthquakes occurred in 1638 (magnitude 6.5) in Vermont or New Hampshire, and in 1755 (magnitude 5.8) offshore from Cape Ann northeast of Boston. The Cape Ann earthquake caused severe damage to the Boston waterfront. The most recent New England earthquake to cause moderate damage occurred in 1940 (magnitude 5.6) in central New Hampshire.