Small earthquake felt Wednesday, the second in the Concord area in 10 days

The Concord region felt the second small earthquake in 10 days on Wednesday.

A temblor registering 2.0 on the Richter scale and centered in Loudon struck around 2:50 p.m. That follows a 2.7 quake that hit Dec. 23 near the Steeplegate Mall in Concord.

That pre-Christmas temblor produced enough of a shake that the Altitude Trampoline Park in the mall shut down over Christmas “while reviewing our building for safety.” It reopened Dec. 26.

New England has relatively little earthquake activity. Just 10 quakes were reported in New Hampshire by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2023, all of them so small (under 3.0 on the Richter scale) that they caused no damage.

Our lack of seismic activity is the result of being far from the border of any tectonic plate. Most quakes are caused when these huge plates underlying the continents and oceans bumps into each other.

However, it’s not unknown for New Hampshire to have small quakes follow each other relatively quickly. In February of 2023, for example, there were temblors on two successive days: one in Warner and one in North Woodstock.