TEXAS, USA — A 3.3 magnitude earthquake hit Gonzales County early Saturday morning.
The earthquake hit at about 12:49 a.m. six miles from Smiley, Texas, which is about a three-hour drive from Houston.
No injuries nor damage have been reported.
Texas is no stranger to earthquakes.
West Texas saw a dramatic increase in earthquakes, jumping from 19 in 2009 to 1,600 in 2017 alone, according to a study published in 2019 by the University of Texas at Austin.
The study, which was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, tracked nearly 20 years of seismic activity, the Texas Tribune reported. The scientists documented more than 7,000 earthquakes near Pecos, Texas starting in 2009, most of them so small that no one felt them.
While earthquake activity coincided with a large increase in oil and gas production in West Texas, the study did not try to link the two.
The research lays the groundwork to understand “the relationship between earthquakes and their human and natural causes,” Peter Hennings, the study's co-author and a research scientist at the UT Bureau of Economic Geology, said in a written statement.
ALSO POPULAR ON KHOU.COM
