Earthquake in Ontario
 

Earthquakes which can be felt are very rare in Ontario, in my 65 years, I remember only one, a 3.0, which was hardly noticeable. Well, tonight, very different! I thought that there had been a massive explosion nearby, I honestly thought that my office window was going to come in at me. I drove to check on the neighbours, and look for the fireball - nothing. I went to the local firehall, and got the trucks started and out the doors for the firefighters (I'm retired), and soon they came, responding to calls all over - but there was nothing to be found.

Earthquakes Canada and the USGS both put the epicenter 5 km from my house - yup! I believe that! If this was a 4.1, now I sure feel for people who suffer a 6 or 7! This was a massive jolt! The map is now showing that there have been nearly 2000 reports, from as far as 300 km away.

The only reported injury so far is only pride, our 80 pound dog jumping onto our daughter in bed!

Here’s the USGS link:
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthqua...s4xb/executive

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a6d26c758.jpeg


The depth is reported as 11.5 km +- 6.6 Km, so clearly a very shallow event, which would account for the intensity of the surface movement.

It will be interesting to see if this was movement along a known fault.

I remember learning in middle school or high school that all of Southern Ontario sat on ancient fault lines which were dormant, not extinct. Being dormant, they could produce earthquakes but not to the same degree as those out west. 4.1 is getting up there though. I know we had one in the Halton region when I was growing up, but I remember all it did was move the pictures around - felt more like a heavy truck passing by than anything.

I did a search for Ontario fault lines, and it looks as though the south-eastern end of Lake Simcoe sits over the top of two converging faults with a third fault line running over the northern side of the lake. The first is called the Niagara-Pickering Linear Zone (NPLZ), which runs to the northeast, the second is the Georgian Bay Linear Zone (GBLZ), which mostly west/south west. There is a third zone that runs to the north of Lake Simcoe, but it's not called out specifically in this paper I'm reading, and the picture is too blurry to make it out. Regardless, it's interesting that where the centre of this earthquake is, it sits just to the north-east of where the NPLZ and GBLZ converge, by what I can make out, somewhere near Fenelon Falls - maybe 40 km or so?

​​​​​​​Very cool

Very, very interesting +TSRA! The stated epicenter is 5km directly north of my house (which is the direction I was facing in my office in front of the window when it hit). That's 30 km directly west of Fenlon Falls, though the maps I have found do show the fault line more under Fenlon Falls than here, but I suppose the fault lines have some "width"....

Joke
Some poor fellow is going to have to confess to his significant other that it was not, as she had enthused, he who had made the earth move for her.
Joke Over

Not a frost quake apparently, but a fault rupture.
https://www.insidehalton.com/news/on...2b1f39b6e.html