Earthquake shakes the Southeast

A 4.1 magnitude earthquake in east Tennessee was felt as far south as Atlanta on Saturday morning.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck 13 miles southeast of Greenback, Tenn., at 9:04 a.m. Eastern time.

Shaking from the earthquake was felt in Atlanta, 120 miles south of the earthquake's epicenter. The earthquake occurred in the Eastern Tennessee seismic zone, which extends across Tennessee and northwestern Georgia into northeastern Alabama.

The largest known earthquake in this seismic zone (magnitude 4.6) occurred on April 29, 2003, near Fort Payne, Alabama. Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S. are felt over a much broader region.

East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the West Coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 60 miles from where it occurred,