ORCAS ISLAND, Wash. — A 4.5 magnitude earthquake hit near Orcas Island early Monday morning, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN).
The quake happened around 5:02 a.m. with its epicenter off Deer Beach, according to PNSN.
It was felt strongly on Orcas Island, with one KIRO 7 viewer reporting that the large boom sounded like a tree had fallen on their home.
“I’m out here on Orcas Island. I thought a gigantic tree had fallen on my house. A loud boom and there was a bit of shake and went outside nook figured well, daylight comes. Just learned we had a pretty decent earthquake out here. I don’t know if Friday Harbor was the center, I just thought I’d give you guys a call. It woke everybody up on Orcas Island, but it was a loud boom in that house. Did a little bit of movement. No damage but know I’m built on solid rock so it caused a lot of movement,” Jennie Joplin said in a voicemail to KIRO 7.
Two other KIRO 7 viewers wrote in to say they had felt it in Snohomish and Mill Creek.
In Anacortes, Fletcher McLean, said the earthquake startled his dog.
“He was acting as if there was someone at the front door,” he said. “I thought, ‘Who the hell’s coming in at five a.m. to visit?’”
When McLean began to feel it, he initially thought it was a semi-truck or low-flying jet.
“The whole house was shaking,” he said. “It was over as soon as it started.”
It’s unclear at this time if there was any damage, but no reports of major damage have come in.
Experts say reports have come in from people who felt the quake from roughly as far north as Vancouver and as far south as Tacoma.
Harold Tobin, Director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, says we have experienced more “feelable” earthquakes over the last few weeks, but it’s not necessarily abnormal.
“We’ll go a long time without one that anybody really notices, and then sometimes, we’ll just have a little spade of them,” he said. “I don’t see anything unusual about that.”
Having several smaller or moderate earthquakes does not typically imply a bigger one is coming, though there can be a small chance of a larger aftershock.
“For the most part, bigger earthquakes don’t come because there’s been sort of a bunch of smaller ones beforehand,” Tobin said. “If it did, we would actually be able to do predictions of earthquakes in the near future, and we can’t.”
Tobin said Monday’s earthquake was the largest in our region since 2019. It was also the first one to trigger a Shake Alert early warning notification since the system went live four years ago.
If you felt the quake, you can report it here.
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