A magnitude 6 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 4:19am yesterday, the Central Weather Bureau said.
There were no reports of injuries or damage.
It was the first magnitude 6 earthquake to hit the nation this year, the bureau said, adding that Taiwan experiences two to three earthquakes exceeding magnitude 6 on average each year.
Many people were woken by the quake or by text alerts sent to mobile phones warning about the earthquake.
The earthquake’s epicenter was 85.3km southeast of the Yilan County Hall at a depth of 54.8km, data from the bureau’s Seismology Center showed.
The largest intensity triggered by the quake was level 3, which was detected in Hualien City as well as Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hualien County’s Hsiulin Township (秀林) and Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County.
Its intensity reached level 2 in Yilan City and Keelung, as well as Taipei’s Muzha District (木柵).
“The earthquake was caused by the collision and compression of the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Continental Plate, with the former subsiding under the latter. It was a seismic event deep in the subduction zone,” center section chief Lin Tzu-wei (林祖慰) said.
The area of the epicenter tends to experience a magnitude 5.5 or larger earthquake every three to five years, Lin said, citing bureau data, adding that it does not exclude the possibility of magnitude 4 to 5 aftershocks this week.
Former Seismology Center director Kuo Kai-wen (郭鎧紋) said that the nation since 2017 has not had many earthquakes exceeding magnitude 6.
There were no such earthquakes in 2017, while one magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck off Taiwan’s east coast on Feb. 6, 2018, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit Hsiulin Township on April 18 last year and a magnitude 6.2 quake struck off the coast of Yilan on Aug. 8, bureau statistics showed.
The nation has entered a “calming period” of seismic activity, which most geologists see as a sign for bigger earthquakes to come, he added.
“The nation could still experience earthquakes exceeding magnitude 6 during the second half of this year,” Kuo said.
Separately yesterday afternoon, the bureau issued a heavy rain alert for 17 cities and counties due to a convection cloud system, with hourly rainfall in downtown Taichung reaching nearly 90mm.
The Water Resources Agency also issued a level 1 flood alert for Taichung and a level 2 alert for Nantou City.
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