Home » Recent Local Earthquake » 2018-02-17, M4.4 South Wales

2018-02-17, M4.4 South Wales

On the 17th February 2018 an earthquake with magnitude 4.4 occurred at 14:31:07.6 UTC at a depth of 7.4km in South Wales about 20km north of Swansea, see map below. According to the BGS  hundreds of members of the public submitted felt reports. Events of this magnitude happen in the UK only about every 2 to 3 years. The BGS reports that this is the biggest event in the area since a magnitude 5.2 earthquake in 1906.

dias2018dizj-map-no_stations-05deg
The earthquake was recorded at stations of the Irish National Seismic Network (INSN), see seismic waveforms below (select figure to enlarge).

4-4_2018-02-17_048_14-31-10-800_52-11-5-49_3_240_0_2-none-ei-none

Further information about this event is available from the following webpages:

BGS: http://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_events/20180217142554.html#page=summary

EMSC: https://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=649041
GFZ: http://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/eqinfo/event.php?id=gfz2018dizj

The drumplot below shows the unfiltered seismic signal recorded on the 17th February 2017 at INSN station DSB in the Dublin mountains. The high amplitude low frequency signals between midnight and 1 a.m. are the surface waves of the M7.2 Mexico earthquake that occurred on the 16th February 2018 at 23:39:39, see https://www.insn.ie/2017-02-16-m7-2-mexico for more details on that event. The magnitude 4.4 event with epicentre in South Wales can be seen with much higher frequency content around 14:32.

ei-dsb-hhz-d-2018-048-drum-17-02

More information about the INSN is available via this link.

Past Seismograms
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Live Seismograms
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Filtered versions here
DSB - Dublin
VAL - Kerry

Past Spectrograms
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Live Spectrograms
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ITIP - N. Tipperary
IMAY - Mayo