© AlasdairJames/Getty/iStockphotoPA MediaBellanoch, near Lochgilphead. The epicentre of the quake was 11 miles north-west of Lochgilphead, 88 miles north-west of Glasgow.
Residents of western Scotland received a bump in the night after an earthquake shook the region in the early hours of Tuesday.
A quake with a magnitude of 3.1
occurred shortly before 2am with its epicentre 11 miles north-west of the town of Lochgilphead, 88 miles north-west of Glasgow, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
More than 30 people reported to the USGS that they had felt the tremor, with reports coming from as far as Edinburgh and Ballycastle in Northern Ireland.
The agency said the quake happened 10km below the earth's surface.
Data from the British Geological Survey shows between 200 and 300 earthquakes are detected in the UK every year, with
tremors of between 3.0 and 3.9 magnitude occurring on the mainland once every three years on average.
Comment: The BBC
provides some additional info that reveals quakes of this kind don't happen that often:
Rosemary Neagle, who lives on a farm in Kilmartin Glen near Lochgilphead, said the noise of the tremor was so loud that she initially thought something had exploded in one of her sheds.
She told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme: "It kept on intensifying and the house vibrated. It rumbled on for about 10 seconds afterwards, so it was quite frightening.
"I have experienced them before here but never to that extent. The house has never shook like that in the past."
The overnight earthquake registered on all the seismographs across Ireland.
Dr Martin Möllhoff, director of Seismic Networks in Dublin, said it was the first felt earthquake that had been anywhere in Ireland since one was recorded close to the Irish border in County Donegal in 2019.
"It is a little bit exciting because this does not happen so often and most people think there are no earthquakes in Ireland," he said.
Comment: The BBC provides some additional info that reveals quakes of this kind don't happen that often: