December 22, 2025

An Earthquake Has Hit Alabama

By: Rick McCann
Blue RAM Media/Gulf Coast News

December 22, 2025

TUSCALOOSA, AL.

An earthquake has hit Alabama!

According to USGS, Alabama was rattled by an earthquake during the overnight hours.
A relatively weak earthquake rated as a magnitude 2.1 event struck near Tuscaloosa in the west central part of the state. The earthquake rattled the area at 1:53 am today and the earthquake’s epicenter had a depth of 4.2 km.

Earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.0 or less are rarely felt or heard by people, according to USGS, but once they exceed 2.0 more and more people can feel them. While damage is possible with magnitude 3.0 events or greater, significant damage and casualties usually don’t occur until the magnitude of a seismic event rises to a 5.5 or greater rated event.

Authorities in the area did not report any damage.

Earthquakes are not uncommon in Alabama. This map shows epicenters of historical Alabama earthquakes since 1886 and surface and basement faults. Image: Geological Survey of Alabama

According to the Geological Survey of Alabama (GSA), earthquakes aren’t completely rare in the state. According to GSA, “Most of the earthquakes we experience in Alabama are associated with the Southern Appalachian Seismic Zone (an extension of the East Tennessee Seismic Zone) that runs along the Appalachian Mountains from the northeastern corner into the central part of the state and the Bahamas Fracture Seismic Zone in southern Alabama.

The strongest earthquake to ever hit the state was a magnitude 5.1 event in 1916 in northern Shelby County.

The second and third strongest earthquakes were each rated as a magnitude 4.9 event. One struck in DeKalb County, 10 miles northeast of Fort Payne, on April 29, 2003. The earthquake was widely felt across the northern half of Alabama and Georgia, much of Tennessee, and even portions of Kentucky, North and South Carolina, and Mississippi. The other struck in Escambia County on October 24, 1997; that earthquake was responsible for a berm around a lake to fail, spilling water and fish across a road. Large cracks also developed in sand along a creek not far from the epicenter. Both of those 4.9 magnitude events did some damage, mainly to weaker masonry found in the northern part of the state.