Earthquakes

 This week we are studying Earthquakes! I find this subject pretty interesting and was surprised to see we had an earthquake 146 miles from my house within the last 30 days. It was so surprising I had my wife come look at the map. I was not expecting an earthquake so close to where I live. I did expect to see some in Yellowstone National Park and so this did not surprise me as there were 5 in the last 30 days.

Here are some screenshots (I'm sorry if they aren't very clear) to show where this earthquake happened. I live in Glenrock, Wyoming. This earthquake was 32 miles south of the town of Ten Sleep. It registered at a 3.7 magnitude earthquake. Ten sleep is 146 miles or 3 hours from my town. (In Wyoming because it's so many miles from town to town, we usually quote distances in hours it takes to get there. For example from my house if somebody asks me how far Cheyenne is we just say 2 hours.)

Given this new information, I still feel relatively safe where I live. I remember an earthquake occurring in my hometown of Evanston, Wyoming when I was about 14 years old and the school actually received some cracks in the walls because of it. We didn't worry, but science class was pretty exciting that day.

Shallow earthquake at the orange dot near the center of the screen

Details of the earthquake. I live where the red marker is, so you can see it's relatively close.

Zoomed out view to show plate boundaries in relation to where the earthquake near me occured.