Magnitude 5.1 West Texas earthquake felt in Downtown Dallas

West Texas feels of state's strongest earthquakes ever

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake at 9:28 a.m. on Friday in West Texas. The tremors were felt all the way in Dallas-Fort Worth.

DALLAS - For the second day in a row, an earthquake has rattled homes in West Texas. Many people in North Texas also felt this one.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake at 9:28 a.m. on Friday.

The FOX 4 weather team says the earthquakes on Friday and Monday were one of the strongest in Texas history.

The epicenter was near Hermleigh, Texas, which is about 200 miles west of Fort Worth.

It’s the same area where a smaller magnitude 2.5 earthquake hit on Thursday and a magnitude 4.9 earthquake hit on Monday.

Friday morning's earthquake was originally listed as having a magnitude of 4.8 on the Richter scale. The USGS later upgraded that number to 5.1.

Two smaller 3.3 and 2.7 quakes were also recorded at 9:40 a.m. and 10:44 a.m. on Friday.

FOX 4 spoke to Brian Stump, a professor at SMU who studies earthquakes.

"Well, you know, there have been magnitude fives in West Texas over the last several years," said Stump.

Many people reported feeling things rumble in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex on Friday morning.

FOX 4 got multiple reports from people living as far north as the Red River and as close as Downtown Dallas.

Stump wasn't surprised that people in Dallas felt a rumble on Friday morning.

"They're like when you when you drop a rock in a pond. You watch that wave, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller the further it propagates away. That same thing is happening in the Earth with the seismic waves. We just can't see them because the motion is so small, but we can feel," he said.

A Scurry County judge made a disaster declaration after Friday's earthquake caused damage across the area.

Stump doesn't know what exactly is causing the quakes, but says the area should be studied to determine whether man-made activities like fracking might have played a role.

"Since 2016, the state of Texas has been pretty proactive. And so, there's now a very robust set of seismic stations around the state of Texas. Those are designed to be able to study these kinds of events," he said. "If indeed this happens to be an induced event, then maybe mitigate the additional events by changing activities in the area."

Over the past week, the U.S. Geological Survery recorded 86 earthquakes in Scurry and Fisher counties.