Strong Russian earthquake detected in Georgia

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - A seismograph on Skidaway Island detected the July 29 earthquake in Russia, over 5,500 miles away from its origin point.

The July 29, 2025 earthquake is now one of the top 10 strongest earthquakes on record, registering a 8.8 in magnitude.

We might not have been able to feel it, but the Skidaway Island Seismograph (operated by the National Science Foundation’s Seismological Facility for the Advancement of Geoscience) could.

You can see a close-up moment of when the Russian earthquake was detected in Georgia below:

Above, the jagged lines indicate where the seismograph detected fast-moving “P-waves” which move through the earth’s crust.

“P-waves” travel quicker than other seismic waves and hit seismograph stations before the other types of body waves earthquakes can create.

In 1952, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake was registered only thirty miles away from the July 29, 2025 earthquake in Russia.

These waves are so strong they can still be detected on Skidaway Island.

Seismic activity felt all the way in Chatham County

The University of Georgia’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography registered tremors in the ground from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia all the way to Skidaway Island in just 14 minutes.

Their seismograph gives daily readings, and the institute is part of a chain that helps to fully map out earth-shaking activity.

While the west coast of the United States was in tsunami danger earlier Wednesday, coastal Georgia’s chances of major earthquake-related activity are slim to none according to institute director Clark Alexander.

“We’re really not at any risk as far as we can tell. There was some work done by the USGS back in the 2010s because there were some large cracks on the edge of the continental shelf that people had identified. The conditions that would need to be achieved are so specific that the chances of it happening are infinitesimal,” said Alexander.

WTOC spoke with the group’s director on how to better understand their seismographs and what exactly the earthquake looked like beneath the surface.