Mild Earthquake Rattles East Hampton; 'Moodus Noises' Acting Up?

EAST HAMPTON, CT — The U.S. Geological Survey has confirmed the noise you heard and the rumbling you felt just before 9 a.m. Thursday was, indeed, an earthquake.

Town officials took to social media to point their fingers at "Moodus noises," but the seismologists at the USGS were able to hang some numbers on the rumblings.

The scientists tracked the epicenter of the 1.7 magnitude earthquake to 2 kilometers, or about 1.24 miles, east of the center of town.

"Micro-earthquakes" that small are not usually felt, according to USGS, but there are millions of them recorded each year on seismographs.

The thunderings and crashings that seem to originate somewhere around Mount Tom, located in what is now Machimoodus (Algonquian dialect, "place of bad noises") State Park, have been rattling teacups for centuries. The Native Americans attributed the noises to a god named Hobbamock, while many of the European colonists who followed later chalked the ruckus up to the Devil.

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Is It Over?

According to The Northeast States Emergency Consortium, Moodus earthquakes tend to be concentrated in swarms, when many small events are heard and felt over the course of several weeks or months.

During the 1980s, several earthquake swarms rattled Moodus, each lasting a few months, and all consisting of more than 100 small quakes.

Occasionally, the ground beneath Connecticut may not be the source of the quake, but the state will still shake down pretty well. In 2019, seismologists recorded a 4.7 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Ocean City, MD, but the effects of it were felt widespread, including Connecticut.