Earthquake in the Urals: an abnormal phenomenon or a regular event

The earthquake the other day pretty much scared the residents of the South Urals, despite the fact that no casualties or significant damage were recorded. For many, it was a real discovery that the Urals is a region where earthquakes can occur, and the event itself caused a storm of emotions and discussions on social networks. Meanwhile, this phenomenon is quite natural, and, according to scientists, there is nothing surprising or abnormal in the earthquake that happened.

The Ural Mountains cannot be attributed to the young, and their active formation as a mountain system ended in the Triassic period, about 200 million years ago. If we compare the Urals with Transbaikalia, Altai, the Caucasus or Kamchatka, then it is undoubtedly the most calm of them in seismic terms. Despite the fact that mountain building processes continue on the territory of the Ural Mountains, they are of low intensity. This region belongs to the zone of seismic activity, where earthquakes with a magnitude of 3-6 are possible, but no more. In other words, those shocks that were felt are almost the maximum that is possible in this territory.

Based on this, an earthquake of magnitude 5.4-5.6, which occurred in the Southern Urals with an epicenter in the Katav-Ivanovsky district of the Chelyabinsk region, is not unusual. In the Urals, several earthquakes with a magnitude of up to 3 are recorded annually, but seismic events with a magnitude of 3-6 occur much less frequently. According to available data over the past 50 years, tangible earthquakes, the magnitude of which was 4-4.5, occurred in the region in 1970, 1980, 1987, 1990, 2010 and 2015. The previous earthquake in October 2015 had a magnitude of 4.2, and it was felt by residents of the Sverdlovsk region and Yekaterinburg. If you look at a map of places of seismic activity on the territory of our country, you can see that in the Urals such events have also been repeatedly recorded.

Scientists note that there is nothing terrible or atypical in the earthquake, and such events are the norm for the Urals, especially for its southern part.