As residents around the state continue to relay where they were during Tuesday's earthquake, one expert said the odds of aftershocks being felt in New Hampshire are slim.

John Ebel, a geophysics professor at Boston College and director of the Weston Observatory, said it's unlikely the Granite State will start to shake, rattle or roll again in the coming days.

“If there are any, they would likely be felt only by residents living within a few miles of the epicenter,” said Ebel. The epicenter of Tuesday's magnitude 4.0 quake was near Hollis Center, Maine, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Compared to larger quakes in California, the roughly 10 seconds of shaking New Hampshire residents endured Tuesday may seem minor — unless it was your house that was rocking.

“The pictures shook, pieces of the mantle shook but nothing broke,” said Guy Schubert of Manchester. “I thought it was a plane flying low, but then I got a call from my son in Massachusetts, and he said it was an earthquake. I thought he was joking.”

Justin Eldred lives on Route 26 just four miles from the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in Dixville Notch.

“I personally felt the earthquake last night for about 5 seconds,” he said. “Honestly, my wife and I thought the vibrations were from a tractor-trailer on the highway until I looked out the window to see no traffic. I then quickly came to the assumption that it must have been an earthquake.”

Dave Willis of Littleton said he felt it.

“The blinds in front of me in my office shook,” he said. “The dogs – two 95-pound Rhodesian Ridgebacks — didn't move an inch or make a sound.”

Willis checked the USGS site right away, but the quake wasn't showing up yet. He said he opened Facebook next and friends in Vermont and Littleton had already weighed in.

“One neighbor a half-mile away had four pictures shaken off the wall and broken,” he said.

According to the USGS, New Hampshire has endured several hundred earthquakes throughout its history.

On Nov. 9, 1810, Exeter was rattled by an intensity 6 earthquake, accompanied by a noise like a “great explosion” directly beneath the area. Windows were broken in Portsmouth.

The Concord region experienced several shocks between 1872 and 1891. Two moderate earthquakes, the first on Nov. 18, 1872, and the second on Dec. 19, 1882, were felt there. The first one lasted 10 seconds and was felt up in Laconia, while the 1882 tremor shook buildings in Dover and Pittsfield.

According to the USGS, the two largest quakes in New Hampshire history occurred four days apart in 1940, Dec. 20 and 24, both centered in Ossipee. Both quakes measured 5.5 on the Richter Scale.

Tamworth sustained the most damage, mostly to older homes and chimneys. Reports stated well water was muddy for several days, and minor damage such as cracked walls, broken water pipes, fallen plaster, and broken furniture also occurred.

At the Riverside Cemetery at Whittier, about 3 kilometers south of Tamworth, five monuments were displaced.

A 3.1-magnitude quake struck in New Hampshire shortly before midnight Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010. No injuries were reported.

Conway police did not report any damage from Tuesday's quake.

At Epping Town Hall, employees were still talking about the quake Wednesday morning. Joyce Blanchard, the selectmen's administrative assistant, said she had just answered a political-related call when the quake shook her Epping home.

“The whole house shook. The lamp shade was still shaking for a few minutes after it happened,” Blanchard said.

Hampton resident Susan Nolan couldn't believe the strength of the quake.

“It was a terrifying for me here at Hampton Beach. My condominium building was shaking violently and there was a horrible loud sound like a bad storm or a train,” Nolan said.

Nolan immediately contacted a friend who is a geologist. “He told me that because I'm at the beach and my condo is built on soft material, kind of like Jell-O, that can make it worse. So, earthquake 'waves' travel horizontally and hit the 'Jell-O' and you get quite a ride. I hope I never experience that ride again. I'm still shaking even though the earth has stopped,” she said.

In Derry, Police Capt. Vernon Thomas said several calls to the station asked what had happened, but there were no reports of damage. Public Service of New Hampshire, New Hampshire's largest electric utility, said it had no outages or problems associated with the earthquake.

Londonderry residents felt the quake, but there were no reports of damage or other serious incidents in town, according to Police Chief Bill Hart. He said the department did receive an “immediate high volume” of calls after the incident, but things quieted down quickly.

Police officials in several eastern Lakes Region towns reported high call volume to dispatch centers. In Wakefield, Police Chief Kenneth Fifield was on a call outdoors at the time.

“We were on a couple of other calls at the time of the quake, and we lost cell phone contact for about a half an hour, which is a concern because in the event of something really big happening, the cell phones are going to be out,” he said. “That was one observation from the quake. It put a stress on the system. We learned in the event of a serious emergency, cell phone service will be under extreme stress.”

Carroll County Dispatch Supervisor Keith Brown said the center fielded about 90 calls in 20 minutes from concerned residents reporting loud bangs, explosions or that their house shook.

Middleton Fire Capt. Lon Berry said firefighters were already at the fire station for their weekly training meeting when the earthquake struck, but it took a moment for them to realize what happened.

“When the concrete flood started shaking with the doors, we knew it wasn't the wind,” Berry said. “As soon as it was over, all our phones started to ring at once.”

Safety officials in the towns of Hooksett, Pembroke, Allenstown, Candia, Deerfield, Epsom and Auburn all reported having received no emergency calls or reports of damage as a result of the earthquake.

Correspondents Sara Young-Knox, Jason Schreiber, Adam Swift, Larissa Mulkern, Kristi Garofalo, John Quinn, Brendan Clogston, and April Guilmet contributed to this story.