Small Earthquakes Reported in Northeast Arkansas

A series of small earthquakes occurred Jan. 26 in northeast Arkansas.

The U.S. Geological Survey said three quakes of magnitudes ranging from 2 to 2.8 occurred between 1 a.m. and 5:09 a.m. a few miles east of Walnut Ridge and 85-90 miles northwest of Memphis, Tenn., the largest population center nearby.

That magnitude is considered barely strong enough to be felt on the earth’s surface and too weak to cause serious damage.

The New Madrid Seismic Zone, which includes northeast Arkansas, produces numerous small earthquakes each year.

A series of quakes believed to be some of the strongest ever to hit North America occurred in the region in late 1811 and early 1812.

Haydar Al-Shukri, the director of the Arkansas Earthquake Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, recently identified a previously unknown fault in eastern Arkansas, saying it could potentially trigger a magnitude 7 earthquake in the cotton fields of the upper South.