Way More than 300 New Madrid Quakes Shook Missouri in 2024

It's tradition to spend the last day of the year looking back at what's taken place and that includes earthquakes. The New Madrid Seismic Zone shook Missouri way more than 300 times in 2024.

The USGS keeps an online catalog of every measurable quake for decades. I decided to query their database and see exactly how many New Madrid quakes have been confirmed in Missouri starting on January 1, 2024 and carrying through today. Here's what they showed.

• 317 confirmed New Madrid Fault quakes in 2024
• Largest was 3.8 near Steele, Missouri on May 16, 2024
• Only 4 quakes measuring over 3 in magnitude on the Richter Scale

This is what the 2024 New Madrid Fault earthquake map looks like.

The good news is even the largest 2024 New Madrid Fault quake was not large enough to do any meaningful damage.

The question now is what will 2025 hold in store for this seismically-active part of southern Missouri? We know that the USGS says there's around a 40% chance that Missouri will have a major quake in the next 30 years. Will 2025 be that year or will we continue to see consistently smaller shakes? Let's hope for all of our sakes it's that second one.