We have been having those in the Midwest too. My wife and I were woke up by, what seemed to be a boom in the back yard. I got up to investigate and just as I laid back down I heard it again. It sounded like somebody dropping something heavy on my deck. But the dog didn't seem to take notice. Still I took her and my .45 down stairs to check things out. The next morning, it was on the news. I have never heard of that before this season.
I have never heard of them before either until there was an article just last week about reports of them in my local newspaper.
From what I understand they are very localized events, not felt very far from where it happens. FWIW where I live I am surrounded by large farm fields; I don’t know if that makes a difference or not but would make sense.
I’ve felt a few small quakes both when I lived in Maryland and a couple since moving to PA.
The one in Maryland back in the early 80’s woke me up, it felt like someone had grabbed the footboard of my bed and had shaken it rather vigorously. I woke up but passed it off as a dream until I heard the reports on the local news the next morning.
Another time since moving to PA I was on the phone with my niece and heard a low and slow booming noise and felt the floor of my apartment shake, sort of rise up and down and back and forth a bit, but for much less than a minute but long enough to notice and know it wasn’t a truck, and my niece some 20 miles away felt it too as we both stopped talking and said to one another – “did you hear and feel that?”
During the 2011 earthquake centered in VA, working in Lancaster County PA, I didn’t feel it but most of my co-workers did. I might have thought it was just the rumbling of one of the many freight trains passing on the tracks behind our building. But it was sort of disturbing when EBS came on shortly after the shake.