STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

If you felt the ground move under your feet Monday morning, you weren’t imagining things.

A magnitude-4.2 quake struck 16 miles west-northwest of Clayton at 9:32 a.m. Monday, Jan. 27, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

It originated seven miles below the earth’s surface. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages.

The last earthquake of that size in Idaho was a magnitude-4.9 earthquake near Smiths Ferry in 2024 between Boise and Cascade.

A magnitude-6.5 earthquake struck 19 miles northwest of Stanley on March 31, 2020, with the shaking felt from Boise to Hailey. It damaged some windows and knocked pictures off the walls in Lemhi County and caused several rock slides and snow avalanches on Highway 21.

A beach and recreational site at Stanley Lake was covered with feet of water. And the top section of the iconic Finger of Fate rock formation fell off in the Sawtooth Mountains

Idaho’s biggest earthquake, of course, was the 1983 Mount Borah, which registered 6.9—the most violent earthquake in the Lower 48 since the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake near Yellowstone National Park. The largest earthquake to strike the state of Idaho, it damaged 11 commercial buildings and 39 homes in Challis and Mackay. Two schoolchildren were killed when a stone storefront collapsed on them while they were walking to school in Challis and one Mackay woman received injuries in her town.