Overview
- The BGS recorded 309 earthquakes up to 18 December, an average of nearly one per day across the UK.
- Activity clustered in Perthshire and the western Highlands, with additional hotspots in southern Wales as well as Yorkshire and Lancashire.
- The year’s largest onshore events were magnitude 3.7 and 3.6 near Loch Lyon on 20 October, part of 34 local quakes logged there between October and December.
- A magnitude‑3.2 tremor at Silverdale, Lancashire, on 3 December generated nearly 700 public ‘felt reports’, contributing to 1,320 such reports this year.
- Seismic monitoring relies on an 80‑station BGS network, and officials note that magnitude‑4 quakes typically occur every three to four years, magnitude‑5s every few decades, and magnitude‑6s only every few hundred years.