QuakeIndex

Earthquake · automatic estimate, may change

M 1.5ml

23km WNW of Searles Valley, CA

· 10 km deep · released about 6.2 lb of TNT

Felt it? Tell USGS Check my area
10 km30 km60 km120 km N Inyo County 83 kmTulare County 111 kmKern County 112 km
Distance rings around the epicentre, with the nearest towns at their true direction and later quakes as coloured dots. Not a shaking map — see the USGS ShakeMap for that.
When
Magnitude
M 1.5 (ml)
Depth
10 km below the surface
Felt
no reports yet
Nearest
Inyo County, 83 km NNE
Status
Automatic — a machine’s first estimate, which may change

USGS · last changed by USGS · we first saw it 2620 days ago

This was a minor earthquake. Quakes this small are rarely felt and do not cause damage.

How big was it?

This earthquake released about 6.2 lb of TNT. Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step up releases about 32 times more energy, so a magnitude 2.5 would have released about 32 times as much.

  1. Mineral, Virginia 2011 M 5.8 2,500,000× the energy of this one
  2. Magna, Utah 2020 M 5.7 1,700,000× the energy of this one
  3. Around the size people start to feel M 3.0 150× the energy of this one
  4. This earthquake M 1.5 about 6.2 lb of TNT

Energy from the Gutenberg–Richter relation (log10E = 1.5M + 4.8), rounded to two figures; bar length is magnitude, which is already a logarithm of energy. Magnitudes of past earthquakes from the USGS catalogue.

Where

Epicentre 35.8373, -117.6442. Map © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Nearby places

PlaceDistanceDirection
Inyo County, CA 83 km (52 mi) SSW of here earthquakes near Inyo County
Tulare County, CA 111 km (69 mi) ESE of here earthquakes near Tulare County
Kern County, CA 112 km (70 mi) ENE of here earthquakes near Kern County

Places and coordinates from the US Census Bureau Gazetteer (2024). Distances are from the epicentre.

Aftershocks so far

60 earthquakes have been recorded within 50 km since this one.

  1. 2.1 10km ENE of Coso Junction, CA
  2. 1.7 15km NE of Coso Junction, CA
  3. 1.6 15km ESE of Little Lake, CA
  4. 1.8 17km SSW of Searles Valley, CA
  5. 3.9 16km SSW of Searles Valley, CA
  6. 1.6 15km S of Searles Valley, CA
  7. 1.8 18km E of Little Lake, CA
  8. 1.6 13km NE of Coso Junction, CA
  9. 2.0 21km N of Ridgecrest, CA
  10. 1.8 17km E of Little Lake, CA
  11. 1.7 14km SSW of Searles Valley, CA
  12. 1.6 14km NE of Ridgecrest, CA
  13. 2.0 20km S of Searles Valley, CA
  14. 2.0 14km ENE of Ridgecrest, CA
  15. 2.3 16km SSW of Searles Valley, CA

Counted from the QuakeIndex database, which ingests the USGS feed every 30 seconds · as of . QuakeIndex does not forecast aftershocks. When USGS issues an operational aftershock forecast it appears on the USGS event page.

For this area

The largest earthquake within 50 km in our catalogue was M 7.1 on 2019-07-06 — it released about 220,000,000 times the energy of this one.

From the QuakeIndex catalogue, built from the USGS FDSN event service.

On USGS

QuakeIndex does not issue warnings. For earthquake early warning see ShakeAlert.