Something may well have shaken parts of Huddersfield on Thursday but experts have ruled out an earthquake.
Several residents reported feeling tremors and strange noises around 1pm. Ornaments wobbled, a fireplace shook and items moved in cupboards, according to people in Brockholes who described the noise as sounding like a loud washing machine.
Daniel Whittaker, who was on Manchester Road, said: “Oddly, just after 1pm I was in a petrol station when two car alarms went off simultaneously.”
But, according to the British Geological Survey, which monitors earthquakes, there was no evidence of a ‘quake in the Huddersfield area.
A spokesman for the BGS said: “I have scrutinised the signals from the nearest BGS seismograph sites to Huddersfield for around an hour either side of the date and time stated (Thursday 19 October at 1pm) and can inform you that there was no evidence of an earthquake detected by the BGS seismograph network.”
When the Examiner looked at the data on Thursday evening it appeared that some of it was missing for the time in question.
The BGS spokesman said there had been a problem uploading data.
After being asked about the missing data, the spokesman said: “The data that you state is missing is in fact only missing from our website. There was a problem uploading the data. It is still recorded and still available for us to analyse.”
The data for two stations ‘Ladybower’ and ‘Uppermill’ was available yesterday but did not appear to show any seismograph activity during the entire day.
