If you were snoozing in front of the television last Sunday evening, you might have missed the small earthquake that rumbled through Whidbey Island.

The quake, which occurred at 9:02 p.m., was centered just off the north shore of central Whidbey in the Greenbank area, and was slightly more than 17 miles below the surface. According to the University of Washington Seismology Department, the rumbler registered a magnitude 3.1 on the Richter scale.

An even smaller quake hit Oak Harbor early Saturday morning, registering a mere 1.0 magnitude. The quake originated 11.8 miles under the city at 7:41 a.m. No one noticed, except seismologists.

By comparison, the Nisqually quake that shook western Washington the morning of Feb. 28, 2001 — sending bricks falling into the streets of Seattle — registered 6.8 on the Richter scale.

While that temblor wreaked significant structural damage throughout the region, few people felt Sunday’s earthquake. Those that did notice said they heard a “boom” followed by a split-second of shaking.

Pam Ross, an Oak Harbor School District employee who lives near Whidbey Golf and Country Club, said she and her husband heard a noise, followed by shaking.

“There was a loud boom, kind of like if an explosion happened out in our front yard,” Ross said Monday.

She said she looked outside “expecting to see something on fire.”

Ross said her house shook “just a split second,” though she added that the motion was nothing like that of the Nisqually quake.

“It wasn’t like what we’d felt before,” she said. “It wasn’t rolling.”

As far as she could tell, nothing was damaged in her home.

Science professor George Biehl, who teaches at Skagit Valley College’s Oak Harbor campus, had a different analogy for the noise he heard when the earthquake hit.

“I felt this last night and thought someone had just slammed the door,” Biehl said. “That’s what a lot of people said.”

Randy Turner, manager of the wine shop at the Greenbank Farm, said he felt the quake in his home in Langley.

“I felt the one from Alaska more than I felt the one from here,” Turner said, referring to the 7.9 quake that shook the Mount McKinley National Park region of Alaska Sunday afternoon, damaging oil pipelines and causing one reported injury.

Turner said he drove to the Greenbank Farm around 10 p.m. to make sure everything was OK. Not a single wine glass appeared to have moved.

“It wasn’t much, that’s for sure,” Turner said.