The earthquake that hit Southern California around 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday night was principally an aftershock of final summer season‘s Ridgecrest earthquakes, in keeping with seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones.
The temblor was a magnitude 5.5 centered about 10 miles south of Searles Valley within the Mojave Desert. It originated at a depth of 6.9 kilometers.
“It’s certainly an aftershock to the earthquake that occurred final July,” Jones advised KPCC’s Nick Roman. “It has been 11 months for the reason that essential shock, and that’s really a fairly widespread sample that we see. So when one earthquake occurs, it makes different earthquakes extra seemingly. And the larger it’s, the extra earthquakes it triggers and the bigger earthquakes it triggers. The quantity dies off with time, however the magnitude does not. The relative variety of massive to small stays the identical.”
Jones additionally mentioned 40,000 quakes have occured within the Ridgecrest space since final summer season.
As she did when the primary massive Ridgecrest earthquake occurred final 12 months, Jones reminded everybody there’s a few 5% likelihood a bigger earthquake will comply with.
That is what occurred in the summertime of 2019.
On July 4, 2019, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit the Ridgecrest space. A day later, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit the identical space. The back-to-back earthquakes destroyed homes and sparked fires, inflicting $100 million of damage.
Residents of Ridgecrest and different cities within the Mojave Valley felt aftershocks, together with a 4.9 earthquake on July 12, for weeks.
To date, there are not any stories of great injury in Ridgecrest, which is positioned within the northeast nook Kern County, roughly 150 miles from Los Angeles.
It seems that ShakeAlert issued a message about Wednesday night time‘s earthquake, but it surely‘s unclear who acquired it. Anecdotally, most individuals in Los Angeles did not appear to get the alert — however some did.
At the moment below my desk experiencing shaking. It labored! pic.twitter.com/et0OeCKULm
— Julian Lozos (@seismogenic) June 4, 2020
Julian Lozos was within the San Fernando Valley when he obtained a warning on his telephone. He advised KPCC/LAist, “I used to be admittedly actually excited to get the alert, as a result of I have not gotten one earlier than. I downloaded the apps the day they have been launched, however hadn’t seen them in motion till as we speak. It mentioned San Bernardino County, so I knew I had a while. I obtained up and walked to my kitchen desk and obtained below it, held on and waited. I am a nasty decide of time, however I might say I felt shaking perhaps 10 seconds later.”
If shaking from an earthquake does not attain a sure threshold, which it could not have in a lot of Los Angeles county, ShakeAlert will not ship a textual content alert to customers.
