The 2.8 magnitude tremor struck late Thursday night, July 16, at 11:26 p.m. local time in the remote San Mateo Mountains northwest of Albuquerque.
The following morning, landowners along the Pecos River, approximately 100 miles northeast of the epicenter, noticed that a spring near the Tererro campground was putting out about five times its normal discharge of water.
Eyewitnesses said the overflowing spring washed sediment from a nearby dirt road into the Pecos River. The resulting murky waters forced anglers to cancel their weekend fishing trips until the sediment stopped flowing into the river.
“The spring has always flowed but something triggered that spring to start flowing considerably,” Game and Fish spokesman Dan Williams told the Associated Press.
The U.S. Geological Survey notes that earthquakes in Alaska have been known to affect groundwater as far away as Colorado, so “it wouldn't be entirely bizarre” for the 2.8 magnitude New Mexico quake to have a long-distance impact.