Moderate earthquakes strike Mexico, Alaska, Japan

Moderate earthquakes struck in Mexico, Alaska and Japan on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The first earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8 struck in southwestern Mexico, in the state of Guerrero, according to the USGS. The Mexican Seismological Service put the magnitude at 5.5. Many people exited the buildings they were in, but there were no immediate reports of damage.

Then a 5.8 magnitude earthquake was recorded on the Alaska Peninsula 14 miles south of Sand Point, Alaska and 573 miles southwest of Anchorage.

It was followed by a 6.1 earthquake that hit below the sea floor off the coast of the Japanese island of Honshu Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The depth of the quake is 15 miles, the USGS said and the epicenter is located 172 miles from Sendai, near the same zone as the aftershocks that followed the March 11 quake. The Japan Meteorological Agency has so far not released any tsunami warning.

Julie Dutton, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, said that while it makes some people wary to see several moderate earthquakes (ones that register between 5.0 and 5.9) occurring in such a short time span, it isn't out of the norm.

"It's not something that occurs every day, but this is definitely not something we haven't seen before, or that we won't see again," she told CNN. "Earthquakes are kind of cyclic and sometimes it'll just happen that you'll have an influx of earthquakes around the same time. Other times they'll just be spread out."

For example, Dutton said there was a day in the past week where there were 12 moderate earthquakes recorded in one day. She acknowledged that on that day, they were on the lower part of the moderate scale, and that these three were a bit higher, but said it was certainly not something to be overly concerned about.

"We've had five or six of them every day for the last week, so it's definitely not something that we're concerned about," she said. "Its just pretty random at this point and it just happened that a bunch were higher today."

Posted in: Alaska,Alaska Peninsula,Guerrero,Japan,Mexico,Moderate earthquakes,Sand Point,southwestern Mexico