Swarm of 51 earthquakes overnight in Idaho about 100 miles from Yellowstone

• Quake swarm rumbles thru SE Idaho near Yellowstone supervolcano
• Ongoing swarm at Yellowstone supervolcano largest ever recorded – more than 2,300 tremors since June.
• Is there a connection between quake swarm in Idaho and Yellowstone supervolcano?

Overnight from Saturday night to Sunday morning (Sept 2-3, 2017), a “swarm of 51 earthquakes” rattled Soda Springs in southeast Idaho. Soda Springs is just a little over 100 miles from Yellowstone, as the crow flies.

Yellowstone National Park in the western United States, is 96% percent in Wyoming, 3% in Montana, and 1% Idaho.

The first earthquake rumbled through shortly before 6 p.m. Saturday and the second at 5:56 p.m. The second and most powerful quake (alleged to be 5.3 on the Richter scale) was centered about 10 miles east of Soda Springs. The second quake, most powerful to hit the region in years, was accompanied by 50 smaller quakes that continued overnight, startling tens of thousands of residents.

Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen said he’s been a law enforcement officer in Southeast Idaho for more than 40 years and during that time there’s never previously been so many earthquakes in such a short time frame. The dozens of earthquakes that occurred from Saturday night through Sunday morning are unprecedented, the sheriff said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Nielsen said. “My wife asked if we should leave the house.”

The quakes were felt in Caribou County, where all 51 occurred, as well as in cities in northern Utah and throughout Southeast Idaho. According to the University of Utah Seismograph Stations, 33 of the quakes occurred on Saturday night and 18 on Sunday morning — the last at 11:41 a.m.Mountain Time.

Is there a connection between the quake swarm in Idaho and the Yellowstone supervolcano?  You be the judge of that!