On 9 January 2018, at approximately 8:51 p.m.
local time
Local time is the time observed in a specific locality. There is no canonical definition. Originally it was mean solar time, but since the introduction of time zones it is generally the time as determined by the time zone in effect, with daylight s ...
(02:51 10 January
UTC), a 7.5 earthquake struck in the
Yucatán Basin of the
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...
, east of
Great Swan Island off the coast of
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
.
The earthquake was felt across Central America, and rattled windows in
Tegucigalpa
Tegucigalpa (, , ), formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District ( es, Tegucigalpa, Municipio del Distrito Central or ''Tegucigalpa, M.D.C.''), and colloquially referred to as ''Tegus'' or ''Teguz'', is the capital and largest city ...
. The earthquake was also felt in the Cayman Islands.
Tsunami
A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...
advisories were issued for certain areas by the
U.S. Tsunami Warning Center. They were later cancelled after further monitoring. No tsunami was generated since the earthquake was an almost pure strike-slip on a near vertical plane, producing little upward movement of the sea floor that would cause a large displacement of water.
Earthquake
The earthquake occurred at a depth of around on a
transform fault
A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subductio ...
zone known as the
Swan Islands Transform Fault The Swan Islands Transform Fault is an active left-lateral (sinistral) strike-slip fault zone that forms part of the boundary between the Caribbean Plate and the North American Plate. It runs along the southern boundary of the Cayman Trough from th ...
in the
Cayman Trough
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The Cayman Trough (also known as the Cayman Trench, Bartlett Deep and Bartlett Trough) is a complex transform fault zone pull-apart basin which contains a small spreading ridge, the Mid-Cayman Rise, on the floor of the western Caribbe ...
, where it forms part of the boundary between the
North American Plate
The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific ...
and the
Caribbean Plate
The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America.
Roughly 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders ...
.
The area just to the west also produced a
large earthquake in 2009 that measured 7.3 on the moment magnitude scale. According to a finite fault model created by the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake generated a maximum slip of 24 meters in a compact
rupture zone. Three sub-events were discovered during the rupture process, the third of which, occurred at a velocity exceeding that of the
shear wave
__NOTOC__
In seismology and other areas involving elastic waves, S waves, secondary waves, or shear waves (sometimes called elastic S waves) are a type of elastic wave and are one of the two main types of elastic body waves, so named because th ...
. Propagating at 5 km/s, faster than the shear wave velocity of 4 km/s, the event is classified as a
supershear earthquake
In seismology, a supershear earthquake is an earthquake in which the propagation of the rupture along the fault surface occurs at speeds in excess of the seismic shear wave (S-wave) velocity. This causes an effect analogous to a sonic boom.
Rup ...
.
Damage
No major damage was reported. However some homes suffered cracks in walls.
Tsunami
A tsunami was observed with maximum heights of in
Roatan Island,
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
.
A surge was observed in
George Town,
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territory—the largest by population in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located to the ...
.
See also
*
List of earthquakes in 2018
This is a list of earthquakes in 2018. Only earthquakes of magnitude 6 or above are included, unless they result in damage and/or casualties, or are notable for other reasons. All dates are listed according to UTC time. Maximum intensities are ...
*
List of earthquakes in the Caribbean
Major earthquakes in the Caribbean are infrequent and are sometimes accompanied by tsunami.
Earthquakes
See also
*List of earthquakes in Cuba
*List of earthquakes in the Dominican Republic
*List of earthquakes in Haiti
*List of earthquakes in ...
References
External links
*
2018 earthquakes
Earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
2018 Honduras
January 2018 events in North America
2018 tsunamis
Supershear earthquakes
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