Saturday Earthquake Surprise and it Happened Near Belgrade

Although the Yellowstone National Park area is very seismically active and thought of as "that super volcano", Montana itself is only the 9th most seismically active state in America. In the last week, there have been 15 quakes in Montana - 1 of which was above magnitude of 3.0 and it was near Belgrade.

"Montana is situated in an active tectonic region, with seismic activity associated with the Intermountain Seismic Belt." As I'm typing this article, a 1.8 magnitude quake just happened north of West Yellowstone! That's a very small earthquake, which happens all the time. It's very unlikely anyone could feel that one.

However, this past Saturday brought a larger quake that was felt by many people just outside of Belgrade, Montana. It wasn't huge and there were no reports of injuries or damage. (There were 9 reports of "I felt it" on Volcano Discovery.)

On Saturday, June 1st at 7:42am, there was a 3.1 magnitude quake with an epicenter that was 2 km NW of Belgrade. (Earthquake Track had 18 reports from the public that they felt it!)

Fun Fact: Belgrade, Montana has had 5 earthquakes in the past 30 days and 64 earthquakes in the past 365 days that measured 1.5 magnitude or greater. Michigan Tech has a very handy chart regarding earthquake magnitudes:

Get our free mobile app

"Magnitudes are based on a logarithmic scale (base 10). What this means is that for each whole number you go up on the magnitude scale, the amplitude of the ground motion recorded by a seismograph goes up ten times. Using this scale, a magnitude 5 earthquake would result in ten times the level of ground shaking as a magnitude 4 earthquake (and about 32 times as much energy would be released)." (Michigan Tech)