QuakeIndex

Earthquake · reviewed by a seismologist

M 5.0mww

251 km W of Ferndale, California

· 10 km deep · released about 480 tons 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 5.0 (mww)
Depth
10 km below the surface
Felt
7 reports · strongest reported intensity III
Tsunami
USGS flagged this event for tsunami evaluation. Follow tsunami.gov for official messages.
Status
Reviewed by a seismologist

USGS · last changed by USGS · we first saw it 279 days ago

This was a moderate earthquake. Shaking at this size can damage poorly built structures close to the epicentre. 7 people have reported feeling it to USGS.

How big was it?

This earthquake released about 480 tons of TNT. Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step up releases about 32 times more energy, so a magnitude 6.0 would have released about 32 times as much.

  1. Northridge, California 1994 M 6.7 350× the energy of this one
  2. Mineral, Virginia 2011 M 5.8 16× the energy of this one
  3. Magna, Utah 2020 M 5.7 11× the energy of this one
  4. This earthquake M 5.0 about 480 tons of TNT
  5. Around the size people start to feel M 3.0 this one released 1,000× 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 40.7714, -127.2271. Map © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Aftershocks so far

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

  1. 2.6 287 km W of Ferndale, California
  2. 2.6 272 km W of Ferndale, California
  3. 3.1 268 km W of Ferndale, California
  4. 2.7 224 km W of Ferndale, California
  5. 4.5 268 km W of Indianola, California
  6. 3.2 262 km W of Indianola, California
  7. 3.2 275 km W of Indianola, California
  8. 3.4 258 km W of Indianola, California
  9. 3.3 267 km W of Ferndale, California
  10. 3.1 255 km W of Ferndale, California
  11. 4.4 246 km W of Ferndale, California
  12. 3.3 262 km W of Ferndale, California
  13. 2.8 253 km W of Ferndale, California
  14. 2.5 off the coast of Northern California
  15. 3.5 235 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 5.1 on 2016-01-30 — it released about 1.4 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.