QuakeIndex

Earthquake · reviewed by a seismologist

M 3.1ml

255 km W of Ferndale, California

· 16 km deep · released about 1,300 lb of TNT

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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 3.1 (ml)
Depth
16 km below the surface
Felt
no reports yet
Status
Reviewed by a seismologist

USGS · last changed by USGS · we first saw it 969 days ago

This was a small earthquake. Shaking like this is often felt indoors nearby and very rarely causes damage.

How big was it?

This earthquake released about 1,300 lb of TNT. Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step up releases about 32 times more energy, so a magnitude 4.1 would have released about 32 times as much.

  1. Northridge, California 1994 M 6.7 250,000× the energy of this one
  2. Mineral, Virginia 2011 M 5.8 11,000× the energy of this one
  3. Magna, Utah 2020 M 5.7 7,900× the energy of this one
  4. This earthquake M 3.1 about 1,300 lb of TNT
  5. Around the size people start to feel M 3.0 this one released 1.4× more

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 40.8702, -127.2621. Map © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Aftershocks so far

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

  1. 2.9 233 km W of Ferndale, California
  2. 4.4 228 km W of Ferndale, California
  3. 2.7 287 km W of Ferndale, California
  4. 2.9 256 km W of Ferndale, California
  5. 2.8 215 km W of Ferndale, California
  6. 2.9 266 km W of Ferndale, California
  7. 2.7 245 km W of Ferndale, California
  8. 3.0 287 km W of Ferndale, California
  9. 3.0 253 km W of Indianola, California
  10. 2.8 231 km W of Ferndale, California
  11. 4.3 244 km W of Ferndale, California
  12. 2.9 277 km W of Ferndale, California
  13. 2.7 245 km W of Ferndale, California
  14. 3.2 249 km W of Ferndale, California
  15. 3.1 234 km W of Ferndale, California

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 5.3 on 2020-05-18 — it released about 2,000 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.