A magnitude 4.6 earthquake centered in Santa Cruz County rattled Northern California early Thursday morning, waking individuals up as distant as San Francisco.
The earthquake hit at 1:41 a.m. The epicenter was lower than a mile away from the Santa Cruz County neighborhood of Boulder Creek. It was about 11 miles northwest of Santa Cruz, 19 miles southwest of downtown San José, and 48 miles southeast of downtown San Francisco.
The quake occurred close to the San Andreas fault, based on Jessica Sigala, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
“For the world, it’s usually not this huge,” she stated. “We will count on aftershocks much less in magnitude for the subsequent hour to a number of days.”
The earthquake was initially reported as a 4.9 magnitude quake by way of the earthquake early warning system, however as a result of the warning was despatched out with little or no knowledge to work with, it wasn’t probably the most correct initially, based on Sigala.
“The notification is shipped out to be able to warn individuals and it goes out inside minutes of the earthquake occurring, however as we get extra knowledge from all over the world, our magnitude can grow to be extra steady,” she stated.
After a couple of minutes, the 4.9 magnitude earthquake was downgraded to a 4.6.
There have been no studies of rapid injury, based on the California Division of Forestry and Hearth Safety’s San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit.
Average shaking, as outlined by the Modified Mercalli Depth Scale, was felt within the Santa Cruz Mountains closest to the epicenter, based on the U.S. Geological Survey. Basically, average shaking is sufficient to wake individuals up, and is able to breaking dishes and home windows.
A magnitude 4.6 earthquake struck 11 miles northwest of Santa Cruz.
(U.S. Geological Survey)
Mild shaking was felt throughout Silicon Valley, and weak shaking throughout the remainder of the San Francisco Bay Space, based on the USGS.
The earthquake occurred near the Zayante fault, which runs parallel to the San Andreas fault. The Zayante and San Andreas faults are thought of to be faults that pose probably the most severe shaking threats within the Santa Cruz County space, based on county officers.
A lot of individuals throughout Northern California reported listening to the alerts generated by the USGS ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system earlier than feeling the shaking.
Thursday’s earthquake epicenter was about 14 miles northwest of the place to begin of the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which prompted the collapse of a piece of Interstate 880 in Oakland and a partial collapse of a piece of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The 1989 earthquake prompted no less than 63 deaths, and was the most important earthquake on the San Andreas fault because the nice 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
