A 6.5 M earthquake has just come across off the slide of California at 6:50am local clock time .
As describe by theUnited States Geological Survey(USGS ) , it occurred at a depth of 12.1 kilometre ( 7.5 knot ) beneath the waves no more than 160 kilometers ( 100 miles ) west of the town of Eureka .
At nowadays , there areno news report of hurt or injuriesto anyone along the western seaboard , and no tsunami warning was issued . The quake did not generate any trigger-happy shake or undercoat movement of any substantial form on land , although many coastal residents could feel it .
aftershock will be expected with a quake of this magnitude , but the threat has , for now , sink .
Any seismal activity around the infamousSan Andreas Faultis likely to cause a bit of a bustle in the metier , but the data come in so far suggests that nothing major will happen along that special fault meshing anytime soon . The risk of the“big one”likely stay unchanged , although as we ’ve previously cover , this peril is still fairly high-pitched and is increase day by day .
This new earthquake come along to have accept place on the Mendocino Fracture Zone ( MFZ ) , a strike - slip fracture where two pieces of a larger architectonic collection plate are grind past each other . This movement issimilarto how the North American Plate is grinding up against the Pacific Plate along the San Andreas Fault , but the MFZ is far smaller .
Clearly , a high amount of stress had built up within the MFZ , and it had jutted suddenly forrader , unleashing it in the mannequin of an earthquake . As the defect segment were slide past each other , but not over or under each other , a tsunami would almost sure enough have not been generated .
The MFZ is associate to the San Andreas Fault , however , and this tremor may have transmitted some of its stress towards the 1,300 - kilometer - long ( 800 - sea mile ) behemoth . This would only service to hasten the pace in which part of it – orperhaps all of it – will rupture .
So far , the USGS judge that there is a 1 - in-3 chance that a 7.5 M earthquake along the San Andreas Fault will reach Los Angeles within the next 30 year . They also calculated that there is a 99 percent hazard a 6.7 M quake will take blank space .
Make no misunderstanding – it ’s follow . This new earthquake , if anything , has likely only made things ever so slightly worse .
prototype in text : The regional architectonics . This newfangled quake took place on the Mendocino Fracture Zone , at the bottom of the image . NASA
