MONTICELLO, Maine — A small tremor reportedly hit the Monticello area New Year’s Day, but chances are it wasn’t noticed.
The United States Geological Survey recorded a quake registering 1.8 magnitude just north of Monticello, at a section of town known as Jewell’s Corner, at about 5:10 a.m.
Henry Berry, a bedrock geologist with the Maine Geological Survey in Augusta, said Tuesday that because it was such a minor quake, there were no reports of any residents experiencing any effects of what he called a “microquake.”
“Generally, people don’t notice anything from a quake until it reaches somewhere in the 2 to 2.5 magnitude range,” Berry said.
He explained that magnitude is a measure of the amount of energy released during a seismic event. Different parts of the country use different scales for measuring earthquakes. For example, California uses the more commonly known “Richter scale” to measure it’s events.
“These microquakes are fairly common,” Berry said. “We get several in Maine every year.”
