The Texas Panhandle just got a reminder that the region’s geology is far more restless than many people assume.
A recent earthquake rattled communities across the High Plains this week, drawing attention once again to the buried fault systems that are a little less famous than those I normally cover along the West Coast.
It was one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the Texas Panhandle.
A magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck roughly 24 miles southeast of Miami, Texas, in the state’s Panhandle region at 5:21 a.m. local time Thursday.The quake’s epicenter was relatively shallow at just 3.42 miles below the surface, according to the USGS.According to the USGS earthquake catalog, this was the strongest earthquake recorded in the Texas Panhandle and only the fourth magnitude 4.0 or stronger earthquake to strike the region since 1900.The quake was felt in Amarillo, Texas, as well as Oklahoma City and as far east as Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Geologically, the Texas Panhandle sits in a transition zone where old basement faults can reactivate if the area undergoes new forms of stress.
The U.S. Weather Service’s Amarillo page notes that the Panhandle has a recognized seismic pattern along the Amarillo-Wichita Uplift and Anadarko Basin system. In practical terms, that means the quake is associated with a tectonically old, buried fault system rather than the plate-boundary faults most people think of (especially those associated with the West Coast).
Only three known earthquakes have had magnitudes at or above 5.0. The largest known earthquake in the Texas Panhandle had a Richter Scale magnitude of 5.4 and occurred near Panhandle, TX on 30 July 1925. No known earthquakes in our area have had a magnitude of 6.0 or greater, but there is no guarantee that has never happened since the seismic record is extremely small.Frohlich and Davis (2002) estimated that an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 6.0 might occur every 300 years in the Texas Panhandle, which could result in serious damage if it occurred near an inhabited location. An earthquake with a magnitude between 5.5 and 6.0 is estimated to occur every 50 to 100 years in the Texas Panhandle.Most of the earthquakes in the Texas Panhandle occur along the boundary between the Amarillo-Wichita Uplift and the Anadarko Basin system (Figure 2). This area contains subterranean faults extending from just north of Amarillo into southwestern Oklahoma.Seismologists and geologists suggest that the earthquakes associated with the Amarillo-Wichita Uplift is of concern because it is geologically similar to the Reelfoot Rift (located in northeastern Arkansas), which has produced historic, powerful earthquakes near New Madrid, Missouri. However, this is merely speculation since the largest known earthquake in the Texas Panhandle had a magnitude of 5.4.
You know things are getting bad in California when even the earthquakes are moving to Texas.
The epicenter of the quake was a small town near Amarillo.
The epicenter was located about 24 miles southeast of Spearman, a town northeast of Amarillo, USGS reported.”My cat woke me up. He kind of freaked out about it a little bit and that woke me up,” said Robertson County Judge Mitchell Locke, who serves as emergency management coordinator. “But I did feel it. There was some shaking. Nothing too extreme, though.”Robertson County is a rural community with a population of about 900 people. As of Thursday morning, Locke said he had not heard reports of any significant damage.One area of concern is the potential damage to the extensive oil and gas industry in the region.
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