A earthquake has struck a Lancashire village for the second time this month.
The quake happened at 5:03am with the epicentre of the 2.5 magnitude tremor located off the coast of Silverdale, in Morecambe Bay.
A 3.3 magnitude quake had hit the a similar area earlier this month, with people at the time describing the noise as “deafening”.
The tremors were reportedly felt as far as 12 miles away, in the southern Lake District.
Residents took to social media to say they were woken up by the quake.
One wrote: “Anyone else feel another two small earthquakes? One about 5.04 and another about 5.08? Woke me up but everyone else is still.”
Another added: “Yep. Wasn’t ‘as’ loud and didn’t shake ‘as’ much but it woke me from been semi asleep.
“One was strange but two in two weeks.”
The epicentre of the second quake
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BRITISH GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
One nearby resident said: “[It] woke me up by a loud boom & the bedroom window shook came from Silverdale direction.”
Another added: “Huge bang. Then a smaller one a couple of minutes later.”
The British Geological Survey (BGS) said people had reported “a quick sharp shaking jolt and made a thunder noise” and “the radiators and pictures rattled”.
The BGS detects about 300 earthquakes every year in the UK, but only about a tenth of these are felt or heard by people.
The quake struck near Silverdale, in Morecambe Bay | WIKICOMMONS
Around 200 and 300 earthquakes are detected and located in the UK each year but only 20 to 30 are actually strong enough to be felt by people.
While the vast majority of British earthquakes can only be picked up by seismological equipment, some have caused damage to property.
The most infamous of these was the Dogger Bank earthquake of 1931, which had a magnitude of 6.1 on the Richter scale.
The coastal town of Filey in Yorkshire was worst hit, with the spire of a church being twisted by the tremor, with properties damaged in Hull, Beverley and Bridlington.
Silverdale has been a hotspot of British earthquake activity
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PA
While earthquakes are not unusual in Britain, the BGS say the main driving forces for activity in the UK are unclear.
Some of the factors include include regional compression caused by motion of the Earth’s tectonic plates and uplift resulting from the melting of the ice sheets that covered many parts of Britain thousands of years ago.