Parts of California were hit by more than a dozen earthquakes overnight, with 13 shaking the state during a span of just 25 minutes.
“Good morning Southern California! Did you feel the magnitude 4.8 earthquake about two miles north-west of El Centro at 12.36am? The #ShakeAlert system was activated,” the United States Geological Survey Shake Alert account posted on X.
El Centro is a city in the Imperial Valley in the southern California border region. The rattling continued until 1.01am, when the 13th quake of the series that began less than a half hour earlier was recorded.
“It has been a busy night to our east,” the National Weather Service’s San Diego office posted on X. “Several small earthquakes have occurred in El Centro in the past 15 minutes. A couple of them were felt at our office. As of 12.53am there have been 13!”
Officials said the USGS’s Shake Alert system estimated at least one of the earthquakes registered a magnitude above 5.0, triggering alerts to cell phones.
The rapid cluster of earthquakes came two days after a 4.6 magnitude earthquake hit several miles north-west of Malibu on Friday. Authorities said no major damage or injuries had been reported.
Dr Lucy Jones, a California quake expert known as “the Beyoncé of Earthquakes”, told the news station KTLA that there was a 5% chance of a larger earthquake in southern California soon after.
But it would not be connected to a larger, 5.7 magnitude temblor that shook the Big Island of Hawaii hours earlier on Friday.
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