Bozeman Feels 6.5 Earthquake in Challis, Idaho

Yup, you probably felt the rolling shortly before 6pm on Tuesday night. A 6.5 earthquake shook through Idaho and was felt in many areas of southwest Montana.

According to the USGS:

• The March 31, 2020, M 6.5 earthquake west of Challis, Idaho (about 120 km northeast of Boise), occurred as the result of complex strike slip faulting within the shallow crust of the North America plate.
• Preliminary focal mechanism solutions for the event, which describe the style of faulting in an earthquake, indicate slip likely occurred on a steeply dipping fault striking either east-west (right-lateral) or north-south (left-lateral).
• This earthquake occurred within the Intermountain Seismic Belt, a prominent zone of recorded seismicity in the Intermountain West, and is within the western part of the Centennial Tectonic Belt, an area of southwest-northeast extension north of the Snake River Plain.
• The quake is about 16 km north-northeast of the Sawtooth fault, a 60-km-long normal fault that extends along the eastern base of the Sawtooth Range.
• Historic seismicity in the immediate vicinity of the March 31 earthquake is sparse; no earthquakes of M5+ have occurred within 50 km of this event over the past 50 years.