You may not have even noticed these earthquakes in Yorkshire this year
You may not have even noticed but Yorkshire was amongst the most active regions for earthquakes this year, according to the latest data.
More than 300 earthquakes have been recorded in the UK in total with the most active regions including Perthshire and the western Highlands in Scotland, southern parts of Wales, and Yorkshire and Lancashire in England, the British Geological Survey (BGS) data shows. The latest in West Yorkshire occurred in Pontefract on September 7 and measured magnitude 2.6.
Meanwhile, VolcanoDiscovery.com reports (in 2025), West Yorkshire has had 19 quakes of magnitudes up to 3.4 with one quake above magnitude 3, five quakes between magnitude 2 and 3 and 13 quakes below magnitude two that people normally don't feel. The website reports this is a below average number of quakes, while seismic activity is above average.
According to the BGS, the two largest onshore earthquakes in the UK happened hours apart on October 20 near Loch Lyon in Perth and Kinross, when a 3.7-magnitude tremor was shortly followed by one of magnitude 3.6.
One local resident described it as feeling “like an underground subway under my house”, while another said “the house shook and all the windows rattled”. After the event, BGS received 198 “felt reports” from people describing their experience of the quake, some more than 60km from the epicentre.
BGS said 34 of the earthquakes happened near Loch Lyon between October and December.
The third largest onshore earthquake was one of 3.2 magnitude at Silverdale in Lancashire on December 3, which sparked nearly 700 “felt reports”.
The data shows 309 earthquakes had been recorded across the UK this year up to December 18.
Brian Baptie, a seismologist at BGS, said: “The data shows that earthquakes occurred in many parts of Great Britain over the past 12 months, with numerous events in Scotland, England and Wales that were each significant enough to be widely felt by many nearby. Whilst thankfully major earthquakes of devasting magnitude are extremely unlikely, the country on average experienced an earthquake almost once a day this year.
“It is a reminder that small earthquakes happen all the time and it remains of critical importance that they are studied to help us understand the possible impact of the rare large earthquakes on major energy and infrastructure projects around the country.”
Seismic activity is recorded by a network of 80 monitoring stations around the UK which are operated by BGS.
Dr Baptie said it is not a surprise that Perth and Kinross tops the list of seismic activity across 2025.
He said: “The west of Scotland is one of the more active parts of the UK. Some of this activity can be attributed to well-known geological faults like the Great Glen Fault and the Highland Boundary Fault. By contrast, north-east Scotland experiences very few earthquakes.”
Earthquakes can happen in other parts of the UK where there are geological faults.
Dr Baptie said: “The earth under our feet has got lots of what we call geological faults in it, and those are caused by our turbulent geological history, and because there’s still ongoing deformation around the UK.
“Sometimes those faults are activated by present day stresses, and when they are you get these small earthquakes.
“The rocks on either side of the fault move past each other, only by a tiny amount in these very small earthquakes, but that still releases a lot of energy, and that energy travels through the earth as seismic waves, and those are the vibrations that people feel at the Earth’s surface.”
BGS has received 1,320 reports from members of the public who felt earthquakes this year.
It said while the magnitude of many of the earthquakes this year is too low to be felt by humans, there can be risks from the largest seismic events previously recorded in the UK, with magnitudes in the range of five to six.
A magnitude-four event in the UK and surrounding areas is typically recorded every three to four years, and a magnitude-five event happens every few decades – with the most recent one in 2008 in Lincolnshire.
A magnitude-six earthquake happens every few hundred years, BGS said.BGS said its research, which is in part publicly funded through UK Research and Innovation, helps improve understanding of seismic risk around the country. It said this helps provide crucial information for authorities to help mitigate the threat to buildings and infrastructure.