The US has been rattled by three earthquakes in less than 12 hours.

Texas, Oregon and Washington experienced seismic activity early Thursday. 

The magnitude 3.4 Texas quake struck roughly 20 miles west-southwest of the town of Ackerly around 12:30am.

A person in Springfield, Missouri, which is almost 600 miles away from the earthquake’s center, felt mild shaking, as reported by the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The Oregon quake was a magnitude 3.0 that struck just before 7:15am ET, about four miles east of Pistol River.

And in Washington, a magnitude 2.9 hit Island roughly half a mile East of Tracyton, a suburb of Seattle, at about 8:15am ET.

Seven residents in Washington have experienced shaking reaching up to level three on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale, a scale used to gauge the strength of tremors.

The USGS describes level three shaking as ‘weak’ movement that is ‘felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings.

‘Standing motor cars may rock slightly.’ 

The US has been rattled by two earthquakes, one striking the coast of Oregon and another hitting western Texas

No damages or injuries related these three seismic events have been reported.

The majority of earthquakes are caused by the constant shifting of tectonic plates. These plates are large, solid pieces of rock that form the Earth’s surface and move atop the mantle, the layer between the planet’s crust and core.

As the tectonic plates slowly move against each other, their edges can get stuck due to friction and stress will build along the edges.

When that stress overcomes the friction, the plates slip, causing a release of energy that travels in waves through the Earth’s crust and generates the shaking we feel at the surface.

Around the world, earthquakes between magnitude 2.5 and 5.4 are quite common, striking around 500,000 times each year.

Earthquakes within this range occur with relative frequency in Oregon and Washington.

Both of these states are located on or near many active fault zones, including the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ).

The CSZ stretches about 700 miles from northern California to Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

In Washington, a magnitude 2.9 hit Island roughly half a mile East of Tracyton, a suburb of Seattle, at about 8:15am ET

It is considered a megathrust fault, which comprises the stuck portions of the boundary between two converging tectonic plates.

This type of fault is capable of producing giant, devastating earthquakes. Experts have long warned that a ‘megaquake’ could strike the CSZ at any time.

The CSZ last released a huge earthquake in 1700, when a magnitude 9.2 struck the fault. Pressure has been building since.

The Oregon Department of Emergency Management (OEM) states there is about a 37 percent chance that the CSZ will produce an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 or greater within the next 50 years.

Earthquakes are somewhat common in parts of Texas as well, but they are typically smaller than those that occur in states along the CSZ, and they have an unusual source.

Research has shown that human activity — specifically oil and gas drilling — is making the state’s seismic events more frequent and intense.

It’s not currently clear whether Thursday’s earthquake can be directly linked to drilling, but it is likely.  

Texas is the biggest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the US, based on an assessment of 2023 data by the US Energy Information Administration. 

The state is known for its extensive use of fracking, or the process of extracting oil and gas from deep underground by blasting large quantities of water, chemicals and sand into rock formations to crack them open and release the fuels trapped inside.

Fracking is not usually the direct cause of an earthquake. It is actually the process of disposing wastewater produced through fracking that can trigger tremors.

This wastewater is injected into disposal wells that typically operate for longer periods of time and receive much more fluid than is injected into the ground during the fracking process, making them more likely to produce earthquakes, according to the USGS.

‘The largest earthquake known to be induced by hydraulic fracturing in the United States was a magnitude 4.0 earthquake that occurred in 2018 in Texas,’ the USGS website states.

According to Justin Rubinstein, a USGS research geophysicist, Texas earthquakes are ‘almost 99 percent likely’ to be linked to local oil fields.

‘We can say with confidence that these are related to oil and gas extractions,’ Justin Rubinstein, told USA Today in July 2024 following a barrage of five quakes up to magnitude 5.0 that rocked Texas within a span of 48 hours.

A 2022 study by the University of Texas at Austin concluded that 68 percent of Texas quakes above magnitude 1.5 were ‘highly associated’ with oil and gas production.