Multiple earthquakes have struck California's Bay Area, just miles from the home of the world's biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley.
A magnitude 4.0 tremor struck just 23 miles south of San Jose at 9.16am ET Wednesday morning.
It was quickly followed by a smaller one, of magnitude 2.7, two minutes later, and then a more significant magnitude 3.6 quake at 9.20am.
The quakes struck just miles from the headquarters of firms including Google, Apple, Nvidia, Meta, Netflix and countless startups.
Over 1,200 people near the quake's epicenter, east of Gilroy, reported feeling the seismic event to the US Geological Survey (USGS).
Readings from the area have revealed that shaking from the initial 4.0 quake reached San Francisco, over 60 miles away.
Quakes between 2.5 and 5.4 in magnitude are often felt for several miles in all directions but typically cause only minor damage, such as knocking objects off shelves.
Just two days ago, California's Bay Area was shaken by a series of earthquakes which struck in quick succession just north of San Francisco, raising concern in the seismically active region.
The entire region sits along the infamous San Andreas Fault, an 800-mile plate boundary responsible for much of the state's seismic activity, stretching from Southern California, through the Bay Area, to the northern part of the state.
The magnitude 4.0 quake took place about five miles from the Calaveras Fault, a major branch of the San Andreas in Northern California.
The San Andreas boundary doesn’t work alone. It's connected to a whole family of parallel and branching faults, including the Hayward, Rodgers Creek, and Calaveras, which take some of its plate motion and spread the earthquake risk across the entire region.
The last major earthquake to break out along the Calaveras Fault happened over 40 years ago, when a magnitude 6.2 quake erupted on April 24, 1984.
USGS has warned that the San Andreas Fault could generate a quake even stronger than this, potentially reaching up to 8.2 in magnitude.
Just minutes away from the quake's epicenter sits Silicon Valley, the bustling tech heart of California's Bay Area.
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