A 2.2 magnitude earthquake struck Grimsby in Lincolnshire on Tuesday evening (August 25), leaving residents in the east coast town and nearby Cleethorpes startled.
Data from the British Geological Survey website confirmed the tremor, which was recorded at a depth of 5km. People living in Grimsby, as well as neighbouring Cleethorpes and the wider area, reported experiencing the shake shortly before 7.50pm, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Residents describe shakes and rumbles
Local people turned to social media to describe feeling 'shakes' and 'rumbles' on Tuesday night. One said: "I felt what felt like a really quick shake in my house, I thought something heavy had fallen down upstairs or in the loft."
Another commented: "Felt a bang like the house being hit". One person wrote on Facebook: "Felt the house shake and rumble". Another resident said: "I heard a deep rumble, I thought it was thunder."
UK earthquake history
One of the UK's most powerful recorded earthquakes, and reportedly the 'only contemporary report of earthquake fatalities before 1580', took place in the southwest on September 11, 1275. Reports at the time noted that, in Glastonbury, the Abbey was damaged and the Church of St. Michael on the Torr Hill destroyed.
British Geological Survey data estimates that there were more than 300 earthquakes recorded in the UK last year, with the two largest taking place just hours apart near Loch Lyon in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, when a 3.7 magnitude tremor was registered on October 20, followed by one of 3.6.
Frequency of UK earthquakes
Despite being a nearly everyday occurrence, only about 20 to 30 earthquakes are felt or heard by UK residents, the British Geological Survey says. With this recent quake scoring 2.2 on the Richter scale, a magnitude-four event in the UK is rare, occurring every three or four years.
A magnitude-five event strikes every few decades while a magnitude-six earthquake is likely to take place every few hundred years. The largest known earthquake in the UK occurred in 1931, near the Dogger Bank, in the North Sea off the coast of Yorkshire.
