On the 4th of July 2019, Independence day, a magnitude 6.4 quake rocked Surles Valley, in Southern California, two days later a much more powerfull magnitude 7.1 struck the Ridgecrest area just a few miles away from the Surles Valley quake. Since then, more than 100,000 small to medium aftershocks, known as "swarmageddon," have hit the same area, including a mag 5.5, a mag 5.4 and a mag 5.0, which begs the question when not if will Southern California receive THE BIG ONE?
Since 2015, the Pacific Ring of Fire has been rattled by nearly 600 major quakes, (mag 6 or higher), see map here. Incredibly the Californian Coast has recorded just 3 major quakes in the same period and Oregon 2. The odds of this happening must be very high and surely the West Coast has to be long overdue for the big, it has to be!
To some, the "swarmageddon" 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles has brought fear that a bigger threat was coming. To others, as long as they don't feel a shake, it is easy to just put it out of their minds. California has small quakes all the time — a magnitude 3 every other day, on average, according to the
LA Times. But not all of them act the same, and some bring more danger than others. As officials install more seismic sensors as part of the state's early warning system, experts are getting an increasingly better look at California's smaller earthquakes. According to
The Daily Mail, It's reminiscent of activity near the San Andreas Fault three years ago that had some scientists on edge for a possible large triggered earthquake.
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