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A small earthquake rumbled through Buffalo and western New York Monday morning, alarming people in a region unaccustomed to such shaking but apparently causing no significant damage.
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According to the U.S. Geological Survey a 3.8-magnitude earthquake centered east of Buffalo in the suburb of West Seneca at 6:15 a.m. The earthquake occurred nearly 2 miles below the surface.
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Seismologist Yaareb Altaweel said it was the region's strongest quake in at least 40 years.
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The shaking lasted several seconds and sent residents first to their windows and then to social media in search of an explanation.
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“It felt like a car hit my house in Buffalo
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I jumped out of bed,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz tweeted.
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Erie County emergency services officials confirmed the earthquake was felt in at least a 30-mile radius, including in Niagara Falls, about 20 miles north of Buffalo, he said.
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Even though the earthquake’s epicenter was more than 70 miles west of Rochester, it did reverberate here, Alex Hatem, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, confirmed.
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On a scale from 1 to 10, the West Seneca earthquake produced an intensity of 4 in the Buffalo area, Hatem said, and a 2 in the Rochester area.
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Earthquake Canada, which measured a 4.2 magnitude event, reported it was felt slightly in southern Ontario.
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The earthquake comes on the heels of two record-breaking weather events in the Buffalo region: A snowstorm that dropped as much as 7 feet of snow in November and a blizzard in December that is blamed for 47 deaths.
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