Reuters reports that a magnitude 5 earthquake struck off Northern California's coast on this morning. This is the fifth moderate or strong tremor to hit the state in a week:
"It was just another aftershock 125 miles off the coast. Nobody that I'm aware of felt it," John Minsch, a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, told Reuters.
The quake struck at 2:27 a.m. PDT (0927 GMT) and its epicenter was 282 miles northwest of San Francisco, the USGS said.
The strongest of the recent California quakes had a magnitude of 7.2 and hit just north of Sunday's epicenter on Tuesday. It was followed by a quake of magnitude 6.6 on Thursday in the same area.
That quake prompted the tsunami-warning center in Hawaii and the National Weather Service to issue a tsunami warning, telling public safety officials that they had between 30 and 40 minutes before a wave hit.
According to the Oakland Tribune, the northern California community of Crescent City was evacuated:
For Crescent City — known as "tsunami central" — it was a brief reminder of how vulnerable it can be if a quake off California's north coast spawns such destructive waves, causing coastal dwellers to hastily head for higher ground.
It was a false alarm, or what Costas Synolakis, director of the University of Southern California's Tsunami Research Center, called "the perfect tsunami," one with waves the width of an adult finger that did no damage, but "tested the system."
Crescent City is the site of the only recorded tidal wave to hit a California coastal community and kill people. In 1964 a tsunami killed 11 in Crescent City.
Seismologists say clusters of quakes are not unheard of and do not necessarily mean the big one is coming. But this Associated Press article reports that some Californians are getting jittery, stocking up on water, food, cash and even insurance.
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