Earthquakes/tremors are one of the most random events we experience in our lives. Large ones cause a lot of destruction and that is why people are usually so weary of them.
In this age of social media, when we have an earthquake or tremor, we tend to tweet or post about it on our channels. Well today at around 10 am, Kenyans and Tanzanians posted about them experiencing a tremor.
I think I felt a tremor.
— TJ (@Mustbe_TJ) August 20, 2019
I'm either going crazy or I just felt a tremor… anyone else felt it?
— Yvonne (@Yvonne_Samantha) August 20, 2019
Y’all who felt a tremor like 10-15 minutes ago?
— The_finance_guru 🦋🦋🦋 (@I_wanna_meria) August 20, 2019
There was just an earth tremor. Anyone else in Nairobi feel that 🤔
— #MuthoniDrummerQueen (@muthoniDQ) August 20, 2019
Did anyone else in Arusha feel that tremor?
— cyanide (@SitiniNaTisa) August 20, 2019
Judging from the extent of this tremor, the epicenter had to be between the two countries and now we have more info about it.
According to GFZ, the earthquake that you might have felt had a magnitude of 4.6. The epicenter was 10 km deep with the coordinates being 4.18°S / 36.74°E in Tanzania. The nearest volcano to the epicenter was Mt Meru, which is a dormant volcanic mountain that is 103 km away. The earthquake started at 06:54UTC which is 09:54 EAT, which goes in line with the times people experienced the tremor.
The earthquake we experienced today is what is described as a ‘light’ on of the Richter scale where objects inside houses are disturbed but things are rarely damaged. These are pretty common and apparently 17 earthquakes of this magnitude happen every day.
We still don’t know what exactly caused the earthquake but it could be due to the ground movement along faults that release the energy in form of waves or
This is not the first time we are experiencing an earthquake of this magnitude in Kenya this year. In March, we felt a 4.8 magnitude earthquake in Kenya with its epicenter in Wundanyi, Taita Taveta.
