As Erieites headed to bed on Sunday evening, many felt a shaking sensation rocking their home, as a 3.7 magnitude earthquake near Madison, Ohio sent shockwaves across the Lake Erie shoreline. 

But according to Dr. Brian Zimmerman, a geoscientist at PennWest Edinboro, that wasn't the only one recorded across our area. 

"There was a small earthquake Thursday of last week, about a magnitude 2.0 earthquake that was recorded, but not widely felt," said Zimmerman.

"And then about an hour after the main earthquake [Sunday] night, there was another small magnitude 2.0-ish earthquake on the same fault."

Zimmerman explains why there were so many earthquakes in a relatively short period of time. 

"You have a fault," he said, referred to the Ohio Seismic Zone, which lies between Erie and Cleveland.

"And in this case, one side of the fault dropped down relative to the other a little bit. And so the faults sometimes move all at once, and sometimes they move in a couple of short sort of steps."

Those short steps were what caused the three separate quakes.