Vibrations from 7.0 quake off California were recorded along East Coast, data shows

That massive 7.0 earthquake recorded Thursday, Dec. 5, off California was powerful enough to subtly move the ground up and down on the other side of the country, scientists say.

The quake occurred at 10:47 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, and vibrations steadily spread east like ripples in a pond, reaching the East Coast within about 16 minutes, according to Ground Motion Visualization.

Seismic stations from South Florida to Maine picked up the ever-so-brief movement, data shows.

“Once the earthquake waves are far enough away from the location where the earthquake occurred, they can no longer be felt by people, but they can still be detected by sensitive seismic instruments,” the EarthScope Consortium wrote.

“This animation, called a Ground Motion Visualization (GMV), shows the motion of the ground as detected on seismometers across North America. Each dot is a seismic station, and when the ground moves up it turns red and when it moves down it turns blue.”

The quake was centered 6 miles deep, about 62 miles southwest of Ferndale, California, “a highly seismically active area near the Mendocino Triple Junction,” the consortium said. The junction is a meeting point where the North American, Pacific, and Gorda tectonic plates grind against each other, experts say.

It’s suspected the quake occurred when two plates abruptly slid past one another, something known as a strike-slip fault, the Geological Society of America wrote in a Facebook post.

“Earthquakes are common in the region around the Mendocino Triple Junction. ... In the past century, there have been at least 40 other earthquakes of M6 or larger, including five earthquakes M7 or larger, within 250 km (155 miles) of today’s earthquake,” the society said.

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This story was originally published December 6, 2024 at 1:19 PM with the headline "Vibrations from 7.0 quake off California were recorded along East Coast, data shows."