Earthquakes Increasing - 5.7. 5.7 and 5.5 Along California-Nevada Border, Cluster Of 30 Hits Near Lake Tahoe

Triple quakes part of massive swarm along California-Nevada border

They say everything seems to come in threes, and while that's not usually the case for earthquakes, it's exactly what happened shortly after midnight Pacific time today as two 5.7 earthquakes and a 5.5 magnitude earthquake rumbled through the Sierra Nevada, waking people up as far away as Sacramento, Reno, Tahoe, Las Vegas, and even several reports from San Francisco.

"My wife woke me up after the first one. It was about 100 miles away and she felt it," Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno said about his early wake up. "And then I was downstairs working."

"If this earthquake had been in the Reno area, it would have probably been like the Napa event, with possibly a billion dollars in damage," Kent said. "When it starts getting that big, if it's underneath a city or a town, it's a bad situation."

"We haven't had an earthquake that's affected it like this," said Sierra District Chief Ranger Matt Green about his last decade or so at the park. "It was definitely one of the stronger ones we've felt, and there was some damage from it."

"We're still in the middle of the assessment," Green said, but he reports many buildings had minor damage, with items falling of shelves, but the bigger concern is the brickwork on facades and brick walls, especially on the upper stories. Roof damage was also found, and broken glass will be replaced with "period" panes, to keep the buildings in "a state of arrested decay."

It's likely the park will still face some shaking in the coming days.

"If you have a big earthquake like a 5 and above, we have a 25 to 40 percent chance of having another larger earthquake in a short period of time.  That's not what you'll see throughout the world," Kent said. "This is its own system here."

Cluster of 30 quakes hits near Lake Tahoe

A cluster of more than 30 earthquakes struck Wednesday in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The largest were a magnitude-5.7 earthquake that struck at 12:18 a.m. PT about 20 miles southwest of Hawthorne, Nev., and 85 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe. A second earthquake struck at 12:22 a.m. with a magnitude of 5.7, and a third, which struck at 1:14 a.m., was a 5.5 magnitude.

The Mineral County Sheriff’s Department in Hawthorne said staffers felt both quakes, but they had not had any reports of problems. The quakes apparently did trigger burglar alarms at two businesses and caused a rock slide that did not block a nearby highway.

The quakes began about 5 miles deep in the Sierra Nevada, the mountain range that divides much of Nevada from California.

Most of the quakes were in the 2 or 3 magnitude range, felt slightly, but not causing damage.

In addition to Lake Tahoe, the USGS said the largest of the quakes was felt in such areas as Carson City, Nev., and Yosemite National Park and Mammoth Lakes in California, all roughly 60 miles from the epicenter.

Earthquake: Magnitude 4.1 quake strikes near Morongo Valley

A shallow magnitude 4.1 earthquake was reported Wednesday morning nine miles from Morongo Valley in San Bernardino County, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake was felt over a wide area of the Inland Empire, but no damage was reported from the light temblor.

The temblor occurred at 9:57 a.m. PST at a depth of 6.2 miles.

According to the USGS, the epicenter was 10 miles from Big Bear City, 15 miles from Yucca Valley and 17 miles from Desert Hot Springs.

In the last 10 days, there have been two earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.

This information comes from the USGS Earthquake Notification Service and this post was created by an algorithm.

Read more about Southern California earthquakes.

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Today's Earthquakes