3.5 wouldn't even be noticed here

The Richter Scale is an objective measure of the amount of energy released by the quake. How that energy is perceived is largely dependent on the underlying geology of an area. If you pour that 3.5 into a swamp ain' nobody gone even realize there was a quake; dump it into some good solid elastic rock and you'll feel it. We typically don't feel these quakes in Ithaca because we are a local swamp area in a sea of hard rock, but, as helen pointed out, the NE in general is a great hunk of good earthquake transmitter and relatively small quakes get felt at distances that would make a Californian shake his head in utter disbelief.