No need to panic, New Yorkers.
Those vibes you might have felt Thursday afternoon were not an earthquake. Rather, it was just a sonic boom that echoed all the way from New Jersey, according to officials.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management said it received numerous calls about earthquake conditions and immediately called the U.S. Geological Survey, which quickly quashed the reports.
The survey’s scientists said the sonic boom came from a military aircraft near Hammonton, NJ, 30 miles south of Trenton, and the boom reached as far as eastern Long Island. The Geological Survey team reminded people that although New York experienced major quakes in 1737 and 1884, it isn’t in any real danger.
“New York City, Philadelphia, and Wilmington are far from the nearest plate boundaries, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea. The urban corridor is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths,” the U.S. Geological Survey said.
