Overview
- A seismic event recorded at about 3:04 p.m. Thursday roughly 91 miles east-northeast of Ponce Inlet registered a preliminary magnitude of 3.9 and was placed at or near the surface.
- The U.S. Geological Survey said the recorded ground motions looked more like an explosion than a natural earthquake because the wave patterns match known explosive signatures on seismometers.
- Residents along Florida’s Atlantic coast reported feeling a rumble but no structural damage was reported and major local operations, including Walt Disney World, continued running normally.
- The USGS noted the Navy has used the area for Full Ship Shock Trials and that this was the ninth experimental explosion the agency has classified off this stretch of coast since 2016, while Navy officials had not yet responded to media requests.
- Full Ship Shock Trials use controlled underwater detonations to test a ship’s structural and systems resilience and those blasts send seismic waves through the seabed that instruments record as magnitude readings.