DALLAS (AP) — East Coast residents were jolted Friday by a 4.8-magnitude earthquake centered near Lebanon, New Jersey, with weak rumblings felt as far away as Baltimore and the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. No life-threatening injuries or major damage have been reported.
Here’s what to know about earthquakes on the East Coast.
The Richter scale, developed by Charles F. Richter in the 1930s, is no longer widely used. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, as more seismograph stations were installed worldwide to calculate the size of an earthquake, Richter’s method was valid only for certain distance and frequency ranges.
Seismometers are instruments used to record the ground’s motion. Magnitudes are measures of an earthquake’s size. They range from 2.5 or less, which are usually not felt, to 8.0 or higher, which can cause great damage.
Earthquakes large enough to be felt by a lot of people are relatively uncommon on the East Coast. Since 1950 there have been about 20 quakes with a magnitude above 4.5, according to the United States Geological Survey. That's compared with over 1,000 on the West Coast.
That said, East Coast quakes like the one experienced Friday do happen.
“There’s a history of similar-sized earthquakes in the New York region over the last few hundred years,” said Jessica Thompson Jobe from the USGS’ Earthquake Hazards Program.
In 2011, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake near Mineral, Virginia, shook East Coast residents over a wide swath from Georgia to Maine and even southeastern Canada. The USGS called it one of the most widely felt quakes in North American history.
The quake cost $200 to $300 million in property damages, including to the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.
The West Coast lies on a boundary where sections of Earth’s crust rub together, causing stress and slippage along fault lines that generate earthquakes relatively often.
East Coast quakes like Friday's are caused by compression over time of hard, brittle rock deep underground, according to Robert Thorson, an earth sciences professor at the University of Connecticut. “It’s like having a big block of ice in a vise and you are just slowly cranking up the vise,” he said. "Eventually, you’re going to get some crackling on it.”
These East Coast quakes can be harder to pinpoint. And they tend to affect a broader area. That’s because colder, harder East Coast rocks are better at spreading the rattling energy from an earthquake.
The distribution of cities across the East Coast also means that more people are around to experience the effects of a quake.
“We also have population centers over a large part of the northeast,” said Leslie Sonder, a geophysicist at Dartmouth College, “So a lot of people around here feel the earthquake.”
USGS experts say there is a risk of aftershocks for weeks to months, which are expected after any earthquake. They recommend paying attention to emergency messaging from local officials.
To keep safe from shakes while sleeping, remove any furniture or objects that could fall and injure you or others.
If you feel shaking, drop where you are. Cover your head and neck with one arm, crawl under a table for shelter and hold on. If there’s no shelter nearby, grasp your head and neck with both hands until the shaking stops.
AP writers John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, and Pat Eaton-Robb in Storrs, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A display shows the news about an earthquake in New York City at News Corp Headquarters, Friday, April 5, 2024, in New York. An earthquake centered between New York and Philadelphia shook skyscrapers and suburbs across the northeastern U.S. Friday, causing no major damage but startling millions of people in an area unaccustomed to such tremors. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Maryland voters will decide in November whether to clear the way for a new congressional map that would favor Democrats in all eight of the state's U.S. House districts for the 2028 elections.
Both chambers of the Democratic-dominated state legislature on Tuesday approved putting an amendment on the ballot to allow the change. Sending it to voters required three-fifths approval of both legislative chambers, which met in a special session to consider the change. It cleared the House 96-38 and the Senate 32-13.
Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, praised lawmakers for putting the measure before voters, and joined them in saying it was necessary to combat President Donald Trump's push for a mid-decade redistricting that favors Republicans.
“I continue to believe that our country needs national redistricting reform. But until that happens, inaction is not an option,” Moore said in a statement. “Maryland will not be caught flat-footed while Republicans engage in political redlining that guts decades of progress that the generations before us fought for.”
In a state where Democrats now occupy seven of the eight House seats, Republicans are calling the effort a blatant power grab — and a move that violates a new state law intended to give voters more time to consider proposed amendments.
In debate in the House on Tuesday, Republican Delegate Kevin Hornberger told his colleagues: “Just because we can go ultra-partisan doesn't mean we should go ultra-partisan.” Other Republicans said constituents weren't behind it and one Democratic lawmaker worried that the change could cost rural parts of the state federal resources if they're put in the same districts with suburban areas.
In the debate, Democrats emphasized that the amendment does not include approval of any specific new maps.
If the amendment is ultimately approved, it would likely be part of a rapid reconfiguration of congressional district lines that began last year when Trump urged Republican-controlled states to adjust their maps to help the party in the 2026 midterm elections. Normally, redistricting happens just once a decade after new Census data is released.
Eight states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas — have redrawn maps to help Republicans, who could pick up as many as 16 seats due to the redistricting. New maps in California and Utah could give Democrats an advantage in six races.
Maryland moved more slowly — and with an approach that will not change districts for this year's elections — because Democratic state Senate President Bill Ferguson blocked an earlier initiative aimed at putting new maps in place for this year. He was worried that the state Supreme Court, with most of its members appointed by a Republican former governor, could backfire — especially because a judge in 2022 rejected a new map that could have boosted the Democrats.
Ferguson said his view changed after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in April, giving Republicans grounds for reconfiguring districts with large minority populations in Southern states.
The question that could go to voters is designed to make it hard for the court to reject redistricting. It would make it clear that the parameters the judge cited — including that districts be compact in form and have regard given to “natural boundaries” — apply only to state legislative districts, not congressional ones.
That would allow congressional districts to cross the Chesapeake Bay, which is the only way Democrats could draw a map that gives them an edge in every congressional district. Currently, the only district on the rural Eastern Shore east of the Bay is also the only one represented by a Republican, Rep. Andy Harris, the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
A screen in the Maryland House Chamber displays votes during the third reading of a proposed constitutional amendment Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, in Annapolis, Md., that would allow a redrawn congressional map. (AP Photo/Mingson Lau)
Maryland lawmakers deliberate in the House Chambers during a reading of a proposed constitutional amendment Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, in Annapolis, Md., that would allow a redrawn congressional map. (AP Photo/Mingson Lau)
FILE - Wes Moore, governor of Maryland, speaks during the National Action Network (NAN) Convention in New York, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis, File)
People stand at the doors of the Maryland State House on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, in Annapolis, Md. (AP Photo/Mingson Lau)
FILE - The Maryland State House in Annapolis, Md., June 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Robert Yoon, File)
