Amarillo residents feel earthquake that happened near Snyder Monday night

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Late Monday night, a 4.9 magnitude earthquake shook the state of Texas and people here in Amarillo are saying that they felt it up here. This magnitude 4.9 earthquake is now the seventh strongest earthquake in Texas in recorded history.

At approximately 10:39 PM, a 4.9 magnitude earthquake occurred between Snyder and Roby Texas. At 10:46 PM, an aftershock with a magnitude of 4.4 struck in roughly the same location.

“They happen more and more around Snyder. I don’t know why, but they seem like more and more,” said Mike Snead, a Snyder resident.

Richard Hobbs, department chair of physical and biological sciences at Amarillo College said he guesses that the earthquake is related to injection wells and the oil industry.

“If you put water down there, particularly water under pressure, it can work into those fractures and act as a lubricate and will allow earthquakes to happen in a place they normally might not, because the faults are lubricated, otherwise without lubrication, the fraction would keep them from moving…Anywhere you have a large amount of oil production, you are going to have this happen or the potential for this to happen,” said Hobbs.

Hobbs added magnitude 4.9 earthquakes are not particularly big but are big for this region.

“Typically, in order for an earthquake to be felt, it needs to be a 2.5, and anything above that then obviously can be felt, and often times you have to be in just the right setting to feel it,” said Hobbs.

Hobbs explains the magnitude scale…

“With the magnitude scale, for instance, which is what the USGS [United States Geological Survey] reports, they report a magnitude scale, what they are measuring there is the energy released from the earthquake, so the bigger the earthquake, the more energy that is released,” said Hobbs.

We asked on our social media platforms if viewers felt the earthquake last night and here is what some viewers said.

Lisa Wilhelm said, “Yes, here in Wellington. I was in bed and it started shaking. We live in a pier-and-beam house. There was also a noise that kind of sounded like horses running outside of the house. I’ve never had anything like that happen. It was a little scary.”

And Irma Dunlap said she felt it out in Bushland, Texas.

Hobbs said it does not surprise him that people in Amarillo felt the quake because seismic waves can be generated a long way.

“The rocks that we have here are very old and very cold and so they are very rigged, and so it’s much like taking a steel bar and hitting a hammer on one end of the bar and the energy from that hit travels very easily through the metal bar,” said Hobbs.

Hobbs said here in the panhandle we will have an earthquake every two to three years or so and they are typically in the magnitude three range or smaller.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the largest earthquake ever recorded in the Texas Panhandle was a 4.9 in Panhandle on July 30, 1925.

“Any of our earthquakes that we have had here were, have all been generally smaller than say earthquakes than they would have in Southern California, where they have much larger earthquakes than we have and causes are very different in California than around here,” said Hobbs.

The USGS is asking Did You Feel It? This collects information from people who felt an earthquake and creates maps that show what people experienced and the extent of any damage.