3.4 magnitude earthquake strikes King County east of Carnation

A 3.4 magnitude earthquake — downgraded from a 3.5 — struck Eastern King County near Carnation just after 5 a.m. today, according to MyNorthwest’s earthquake tracker.

According to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN), the earthquake’s epicenter was 7.07 miles east of Carnation — a mostly unpopulated area. The earthquake and its aftershocks were felt additionally in Bothell, Cottage Lake, Gold Bar, Issaquah and North Bend.

PRELIM Earthquake: M3.5, 11.4 km E from Carnation, WA at 2024/02/22 05:02 PST https://t.co/FquOJSspGM
Did You Feel It?: https://t.co/XQKPcXH74i pic.twitter.com/0IA8JW67OS

— PNSN (@PNSN1) February 22, 2024

“It was relatively shallow at a depth of 11.93 miles, or 19.56 kilometers,”  KIRO 7 Meteorologist Nick Allard said. “Usually, quakes are considered to be shallow until they get to a depth of about 70 kilometers.”

153 earthquakes have impacted the King County region in the past year, according to Earthquake Track, with the largest being a 4.3 magnitude earthquake felt by more than 10,000 people near Port Hadlock-Irondale last October.

More on earthquakes in WA: 4.3-magnitude earthquake felt across Puget Sound region

This most recent quake falls under the Richter Scale’s 2.5-5.4 magnitude range, a range that is described as “often felt, but only causes minor damage.” Michigan Tech estimated there are approximately 500,000 earthquakes within this range across the globe per year. An earthquake reaching 5.5-6.0 on the scale occurs just 350 times per year, in comparison.

Washington has the fifth-most earthquakes on average per year in the U.S., trailing only Alaska, California, Hawaii and Nevada.

If you felt the earthquake, PNSN has a “felt report” to help track an earthquake’s impacts.

Contributing: KIRO 7

Frank Sumrall is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here and you can email him here.