Northern Ireland

Earthquake recorded in Co Donegal

It happened in the early hours of Tuesday morning

Culdaff beach is a thing of beauty
Culdaff beach

A minor earthquake has been recorded in a small seaside village off the coast of County Donegal.

It happened at around 1.18am on Tuesday on the coast of Culdaff Bay.

Equipment at St Columba’s College in Stranorlar recorded the activity, which measured at 0.9 on the Richter scale.

The school is part of the worldwide Seismology in Schools project, tracking more than 1,000 tremors since it joined the scheme.

Physics teacher Brendan O’Donoghue oversees the project and shared the news online of its latest recording.

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The Irish National Seismic Network (INSN) and the British Geology Survey’s Seismology team have recorded the latest event.

An earthquake - also known as a quake, tremor or temblor - is the shaking of the surface of the Earth, resulting from the sudden release of energy in the Earth’s lithosphere that creates seismic waves.



County Donegal has been a hotbed of seismic activity and occasionally records smaller quakes, but most people rarely notice the tremors.

The largest onshore Irish earthquake recorded by the Irish National Seismic Network was M2.5 which occurred in January 2012 on the Fanad Peninsula in Donegal.