Custer County residents got an unexpected wake-up call Monday morning. Julie Dutton, geophycist with the National Earthquake Information Center, says a 3.3 magnitude earthquake was reported aound 4:30 a.m. in the western part of the county.
“We located a preliminary, magnitude 3.3 earthquake in Nebraska, about 37 kilometers east-southeast of Stapleton,” Dutton tells Nebraska Radio Network. That puts the epicenter near Arnold, where resident Ann Griebel lives.
“We just felt a shaking,” Griebel says. “My husband woke up too. We just kind of looked at each other and went back to sleep.”
No damage from the earthquake has been reported. “It’s going to be felt locally. You’re not going to see much damage from it or anything like that,” Dutton says. “But it will be significant to people who are close to the epicenter.”
Dutton says another, slightly stronger earthquake occured in Oklahoma hours before this one. “We do get earthquakes there, so it’s not completely unusual to have them,” she says, “but to have them frequently is definitely something that we don’t see.”
Dutton says the earthquake was felt in the nearby towns of Callaway and Merna as well.