An earthquake that hit off Chicago’s North Shore on Wednesday left residents rattled as more than 170 people reported feeling rumbles from the quake.
The unusual occurrence took place round 2:40 p.m. when a 2.9 magnitude earthquake hit Lake Michigan roughly 13 miles off the shore of Evanston, according to U.S. Department of the Interior’s United States Geological Survey.
Experts say another earthquake was reported beneath the lake near Sturgeon Bay in Wisconsin two years ago, though they aren’t a common occurrence in the region.
It’s even possible that an earthquake like Wednesday’s hasn’t happened in the past hundred years, according to Northwestern University professor and earth scientist Suzan Van Der Lee. However, because equipment used to detect earthquakes don’t always pick up the lighter magnitudes, it’s impossible to know for sure.
Developments in earthquake detection equipment now allows scientists to record more earthquakes of smaller magnitudes than before, like Wednesday’s.
“It’s unusual for it to occur there,” Van Der Lee said. “In the past two decades, maybe a little more than a handful of earthquakes with magnitude two-point-something, three-point-something [have hit] northern Illinois.”
The earthquake was also unique in that it hit just five kilometers beneath the bottom.
Though Van Der Lee said they recorded the earthquake with instruments at Northwestern’s campus in Evanston and are combining those readings with recordings from a seismometer. Though they’re looking to learn more about the quake, Van Der Lee says they’re not worrying about it too much.
“Tere are bigger things to worry about here where we are,” Van Der Lee said. “These earthquakes are not that dissimilar from mars quakes that occur on mars.”
As of Wednesday night, more than 170 people reported they felt light shaking in the Chicago area.
A woman named Rachel who was at a beach in Kenilworth when the quake hit told NBC Chicago that the water suddenly got “choppy” or a moment before calming back down.
A student at Northwestern in Evanston said they were “really surprised to hear that Evanston had an earthquake.”
“I’ve as a student experienced a lot of winter storms, rains, huge winds. An earthquake is surprising and out of the norm,” Ruixin Zhang told NBC Chicago.
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