WINNIPEG -- A 6.5 magnitude earthquake in Idaho Tuesday night was felt in Alberta and Utah.
Manitobans did not feel the tremors but the shock waves were recorded by seismometers or seismographs.
Andrew Frederiksen, a professor from the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Manitoba says the seismometers record east-west, north-south, and vertical waves.
“What this is measuring is the velocity of ground motion in these three directions,“ said Dr. Frederiksen.
“The waves are traveling through rock, through the interior of the earth, they were picked up by instruments very sensitive to vibrations,” said Frederiksen.
He said 200 seconds or approximately three minutes and 20 seconds after the first rumble the wave was recorded in at the Geological Survey of Canada station code ULM at Lac du Bonnet, Man.
“This Earthquake was on a fault line. You get faults anywhere there was defamation and you get active faults when the earth crust is deforming. An earthquake is motion along some portion of a fault plane over which one side of the plane moves relative to the others. Some rock moves in relation to another part of the fault.” said Frederiksen.
Aftershocks will most likely be felt closer to the origin point he said. This is a normal part of the adjustment process the earth and rock go through after the first earthquake.
“You don’t typically have one fault line you have a system of fault lines,” said Frederiksen.
Frederiksen said that while we won’t feel the waves here in Manitoba a 6.5 magnitude earth is fairly major and generally speaking, he said in western North America there is some risk of earthquakes at any given time.
