According to David Robinson, New Jersey state climatologist from Rutgers University, earthquakes in New Jersey aren’t unusual at all. It’s just that they often are so far down the Richter Scale, registering at a 2 or a 3, they cause nary a ripple.

But that wasn’t the case last Friday morning when an earthquake with a 4.8-magnitude reading caused houses to shake not just all over the state but a good portion of the East Coast. The quake’s epicenter was in Hunterdon County.