Gulf Quake

Some Florida residents may have been worrying about tsunamis today, as an eathquake was reported in the Gulf of Mexico, some 260 miles west southwest of Clearwater, Florida. Some reports indicate the quake was felt in parts of Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Registering 6.0 on the Richter scale, earthquakes of this magnitude in this part of the world are rare, and USGS officals assured folks along Florida's Gulfcoast that there would be no "significant" tsunami. According to the US Geological Survey web site:

This earthquake was centered beneath the Gulf of Mexico, well distant from the nearest active plate boundary. Such "midplate" earthquakes are much less common than earthquakes occurring on faults near plate boundaries, and most probably represent the release of long-term tectonic stresses that ultimately originate from forces applied at the plate boundary. This is the largest of more than a dozen shocks that have been instrumentally recorded from the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the past three decades, and it is the most widely felt. The most recent significant earthquake in the region occurred on February 10th, 2006 and had a magnitude of 5.2. We have not associated this earthquake with a specific causative fault.