AN EARTHQUAKE STRUCK just off the coast of Donegal shortly before 7am, the Irish National Seismic Network (INSN) has reported.

The quake measured 1.5 on the Richter scale and it hit the Fanad peninsula, just north-east of the town of Milford.

“I thought it was next door’s washing machine,” local woman Mary Kelly, who lives in Milford, told TheJournal.ie.

It sounded like a large bang, like an explosion in the distance. I didn’t think much of it but my husband came up and asked me did I feel the earthquake!

Tom Blake, the director of INSN, told Highland Radio that it was a fairly mild tremor. However it was “still capable of being felt”.

Our seismic stations picked it up as did the seismic stations in Scotland. It’s just at the area of being felt by people, animals would probably have felt it as well. Our seismic sensors are very sensitive and they pick up very, very minute vibrations in the Earth’s crust.

The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, of which the INSN is a part, said that tremors were reportedly felt by people in the town.

Source: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

The institute for advanced studies noted that events of this nature are not uncommon in Donegal.

The largest event recorded in the area was a magnitude 2.2 tremor which occurred near Clonmany on 21 November 1994.