Earthquake strikes near Buffalo: 'It felt like a car hit my house'

Syracuse, N.Y. -- A 3.8-magnitude earthquake hit near Buffalo at 6:15 a.m. today, rattling houses and waking up Western New Yorkers.

“It felt like a car hit my house in Buffalo,” tweeted Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. “I jumped out of bed.”

Poloncarz said there had been no reports of damage.

The quake was centered about 4 miles east of Buffalo, and happened about 2 miles underground, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS has received more than 2,500 reports from people who say they felt the quake, including Niagara Falls, Rochester and southern Ontario.

Western New Yorkers wrote on social media that they at first thought the earthquake was a truck hitting their house, a water tank exploding, or a sonic boom.

“Omg, I’m shaking in Cheektowaga!!!,” one woman wrote.

And, this being Buffalo, many immediately made a connection to snow.

“Thought it was snow falling from the roof,” one Twitter user wrote.

“You know you are from Buffalo when an earthquake wakes you up and your first thought is ‘was that a snow plow?,’” tweeted Kevin O’Neill.

The USGS said the region gets “moderately frequent earthquakes,” most weak enough that they don’t cause damage.

A 3.8-magnitude earthquake is relatively weak and is not expected to cause much damage, Earthquakes Canada said.

The scale used to measure earthquakes is logarithmic, so each number is 10 times more severe. A 5-magnitude quake is 10 times stronger than a 4, for example.