A distant earthquake rattled the Chicago area early this afternoon.
The quake centered some 800 miles from the Windy City, near Ottawa, Canada. But the ripples traveled all the way out to the Midwest, including Chicago. People have reported feeling the quake in Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in northeast and southeastern Canada.
Suzan Van der lee is a seismologist at Northwestern University. She says it’s not uncommon for quakes in eastern North America to be felt far away – thought today’s 5.0 quake is a bit unusual.
VAN DER LEE: I would expect that you could feel it further away than one would feel the same earthquake in California. But I still think Chicago is a little bit farther away than I would have thought one could feel it.
She says the earth’s crust is especially rigid in our region, so the waves spread far and wide.