Scotland shaken by early-hours earthquake

The earthquake's epicentre was west of Lochgilphead

People in the west of Scotland have been shaken by an earthquake in the early hours of the morning.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 3.3 according to British Geological Survey (BGS), happened just before 02:00.

BGS said its epicentre was at Achnamara west of Lochgilphead in Argyll and Bute.

More than 30 people have reported feeling the tremor, from as far away as Edinburgh and Ballycastle in Northern Ireland.

The survey recorded the quake at a depth of 12km below the Earth's surface.

• Where and why earthquakes occur in Scotland

Rosemary Neagle, who lives on a farm in Kilmartin Glen near Lochgilphead, said the noise of the tremor was so loud that she initially thought something had exploded in one of her sheds.

She told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme: "It kept on intensifying and the house vibrated. It rumbled on for about 10 seconds afterwards, so it was quite frightening.

"I have experienced them before here but never to that extent. The house has never shook like that in the past."

Some Scotland football fans have cheekily claimed the quake may have been caused by events at Hampden Park, where the men's national football team beat Denmark 2-0.

Stephen Fenwick tweeted: "Earthquake in western Scotland? Probably earth tremor caused by several hundred thousand Glaswegians celebrating Scotland's historic 2-0 win over Denmark last night."

Data from BGS shows that between 200 and 300 earthquakes are detected in the UK every year, with tremors of between 3.0 and 3.9 magnitude happening on the mainland once every three years on average.

The overnight earthquake registered on all the seismographs across Ireland.

Dr Martin Möllhoff, director of Seismic Networks in Dublin at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, said it was the first felt earthquake that had been anywhere in Ireland since one was recorded close to the Irish border in County Donegal in 2019.

"It is a little bit exciting because this does not happen so often and most people think there are no earthquakes in Ireland," he said.