A magnitude 4.2 earthquake struck the Kitsap Peninsula southwest of Seattle on Tuesday afternoon, sending weak shaking across Washington while officials reported little risk of damage.
The quake hit at about 2:05 p.m. PDT roughly three miles west-northwest of Wauna, Washington, on the Kitsap Peninsula, about 21 miles southwest of Seattle, at a depth of roughly 17 miles.
FOX Weather reported that thousands of people across the state felt the trembling, including residents in Tacoma, Olympia, Bremerton, and Seattle.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the chance of casualties or damage low. The National Tsunami Warning Center issued no tsunami warning, advisory, watch, or threat.
USGS aftershock numbers stayed limited. The agency put a 5% chance of at least one additional magnitude 4 or greater quake in the area within a day, and a 27% chance of at least one magnitude 3 or greater in that same window.
Over the next week, those figures rose only to 8% for magnitude 4 or higher and 38% for magnitude 3 or higher.
Most people in the Pacific Northwest already live in buildings built to handle shaking. Vulnerable structures still exist, and a moderate jolt is a reminder that design standards matter when the ground moves.
Earlier Tuesday, a separate magnitude 4.7 earthquake rattled the California coast. It was a different event, not an aftershock of the Washington quake.
No confirmed injury or damage totals were released for the Wauna-area shock beyond the USGS low-risk estimate. No named local officials issued detailed on-scene damage reports in the available accounts.
For a region that sits on active faults, a brief afternoon shake with thousands of felt reports and no tsunami alert is the kind of warning nature gives without the bill coming due, this time.
