The year 2019 has just begun and India has already seen a number of earthquakes, out of which most of them have occurred in the last couple of days. Most of these quakes have occurred in either Himachal Pradesh or Jammu and Kashmir region with tremors being felt in the neighboring areas.
The reason for this is that, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand lie on the junction of two tectonic plates. The Indian plate lies in the south, whereas the Eurasian plate lies in north. Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand lie on seismic zone 4 and 5. Meanwhile, Palghar in Maharashtra lie on seismic zone 3 and 4.
Let us have a look at the series of earthquakes felt in the last few days:
However, all of these quakes were slight earthquakes - whose magnitude goes up to 4.9 on Richter scale wherein you feel tremors, but the area gets limited and the extent of the feel reduces. This type of quake only affects very weak structures.
Late on Tuesday night, an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale had hit Jammu and Kashmir. According to reports, tremors of the earthquake were felt in parts of Delhi-NCR as well as in Pakistan's Islamabad region.
The earthquake took place at around 10:20 pm on February 5, 2019 and reportedly lasted for about 40 seconds. In fact, the epicenter of the quake was located at a depth of 40 kms in northwestern parts of Kashmir, around 118 kilometers from Srinagar.
It was a moderate earthquake, as its magnitude ranged between 5 and 6.9. These quakes not only affect the regions in proximity of the center of the earthquake and but can even go up to 100s of km.
The quake lasted for several seconds and caused people to panic and rush out of their homes. However, so far, there have been no reports of any casualties or damages caused by the earthquake.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
Please Note: Any information picked from here must be attributed to skymetweather.com
