Ringing in the last month of 2023, a 3.9-magnitude earthquake rocked Cedar City at 12:16 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 1. The quake, felt throughout southern Utah, originated 17 miles south of Southern Utah University in Zion National Park’s Kolob Canyon.
“I was up working on some stuff at my desk when it happened,” said Chevy Blackburn, a lecturer of communications at SUU. “It kind of confused me at first, but when I looked at my wall and saw the picture I had hanging kind of moving back and forth. That’s when I realized it was an earthquake.”
At a depth of 7.3 kilometers below the earth’s surface, this quake occurred in the shallow crust of the earth. The depth of a quake contributes to how intensely the tremor is felt. An earthquake of a similar magnitude at a further depth may have less of an impact or go unnoticed.
This quake is unlikely to be a foreshock to a larger seismic event, St. George News reported. Seismic events in this area are not strange due to the Hurricane Fault, located between parts of Arizona and Utah close to Cedar City. Originally assumed to have originated in that fault, experts have reported that this quake began miles away. While the Hurricane Fault has been responsible for many high-magnitude earthquakes in this area in the past, this was not one of them.
Fault lines are the areas where parts of a tectonic plate meet in the earth’s crust. Plates are constantly and slowly moving against each other. When plates meet in a way where they cannot move, pressure builds until it is suddenly released and the plates shift. This causes an earthquake to occur and the strength of that shift determines its magnitude.
Though these natural events can be frightening and large-magnitude earthquakes can result in natural disasters, Friday morning’s tectonic event was nothing to be frightened about. The earth is doing what it does best: unpredictably changing.
Author: Lily Brunson
Photographer: Lily Brunson
Editor: Lily Brunson
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