Tuesday 20 December 2022

A Seismic Christmas Present For California! A very powerful, shallow, magnitude 6.4 quake rocks northern California with more than 25 small to medium aftershocks, knocking out electricity to more than 50,000 people in Humboldt County. No tsunami warning has been issued.

Map USGS

A powerful magnitude 6.4 major quake (mag 6 or higher) rocked the West Coast of the US, approximately 200 miles North of San Francisco this lunchtime knocking out electricity to more than 50,000 people in Humboldt County. No tsunami warning has been issued. The shallow quake has been accompanied by more than 25 small to medium aftershocks, according to the USGS website.

As we move toward the end of 2022 today's major quake (mag 6 or higher) is the 4th of December and the 127th of 2022 which is slightly less than the average number of major quakes per year this century with just 11 days left of this year. At the same time, last year 154 major quakes had been reported by USGS worldwide.




2 comments:

Hawkeye said...

News I saw said "shallow depth" but no mention of that number. Googled it and found depth was 10 miles and it was offshore.
Something is up with that depth. There have been so so many quakes at that exact shallow depth that it seems suspicious or suspiciously concerning because the depth at which an earthquake occurred means that is where the magma rising up is that caused that earthquake.
So why have there been an extremely numerous amount of quakes at that exact depth? Curious!

Gary Walton said...

Hi buddy

Depth is not an easy stat to bring up in the records, one would have to look at each individual quake on USGS but yes, you are quite correct in your assumption, the depth of 10 miles is a very common number these days. Many people don't realise that the shallower the quake is, the worse the damage is!