A series of small to moderate earthquakes rattled northwestern Elko County over the weekend near the tiny town of Midas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies.
The quakes, which actually began their seismic activity on Wednesday, included a magnitude 4.97 and magnitude 4.0 temblor about midday on Saturday. Others with less power preceded and followed those. Shaking could be felt as far as Elko.
A magnitude 4.97 earthquake is considered moderate and can cause rattling of dishes, windows and doors and some objects could fall. Parked cars can shake and the sensation can be felt indoors and out. In Elko, it was described as a moderate jolt. The way the Richter scale works, each full increment increase in the magnitude, like from 4.0 to 5.0, means a quake is 10 times stronger than the lower number.
The most powerful of the temblors was about a mile from Hot Lake, a geothermally heated lake, and was about 7 miles south-southeast of Midas, an unincorporated community now seen mostly as a ghost down by visitors. It struck just before noon on Saturday and was about 8.1 miles beneath the surface.
According to the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno, when you feel an earthquake shake, you should look around you and above you to see what could harm you.
“Get your bearings on your next move. Find cover and duck under a desk or sturdy table. Stay away from windows, bookcases, file cabinets, heavy mirrors, hanging plants and other heavy objects that could fall. Watch out for falling plaster or ceiling tiles. Stay under until the shaking stops,” it says, citing information from the Nevada Earthquake Safety Council.
There have been over 30 quakes in the general area during the past week, according to the Southern California Earthquake Data Center at Caltech.
The Midas area has been the subject of several earthquakes this year. From late March through early April, a string of quakes shook the community with over a dozen quakes ranging from magnitude 2.0 to magnitude 3.4 that were centered close to the confluence of Rock Creek and Willow Creek just south of the Owyhee Bluffs near Midas.
“We don’t see a ton of earthquakes up there, but there are some old structures in the crust that actually contributed to the ore deposits in that area, which are sometimes reactivated. And the particular valley where these earthquakes are happening has some known faults. We know that they’ve been recently active, so it’s not surprising to see these earthquakes there,” Christie Rowe, director of Nevada Seismological Laboratory, said in April. “Every valley in Nevada has a bunch of faults.”
Another series, this one with eight quakes capped by a 4.1 shaker, hit the Midas area in mid-May. After that seismic incident, Rowe said, “In Nevada, we have a tectonic setting where Nevada is actually getting wider right now. We have a lot of faults that are helping. We gain about a football field of area every year because of each of these earthquakes adding up. So these low-magnitude, high-3 earthquakes up to magnitude 4, each one of them helps make Nevada about a centimeter wider.”
