A 4.1 magnitude earthquake strikes Corona, California

The earthquake was widely felt throughout the Los Angeles area. We provide a quick summary of what happened.

By Temblor team members (@temblor)

At 1:49 PM local time on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 1, a 4.1 magnitude earthquake shook parts of the Los Angeles area, including the cities of Corona, Anaheim, and Santa Ana. The epicenter of the earthquake was in the Santa Ana Mountains, a few miles southwest of Corona. Because of the dense population of the Los Angeles area, the earthquake was widely felt, although it caused little damage.

The broader region has seen several small shocks in the past month (Figure 1). Wednesday's earthquake occurred near the Elsinore Fault, near the intersection of the Glen Ivey (southeast), Whittier (northwest), and Chino (north) fault sections.

Figure 1. Map showing the last 30 days of earthquakes in the region, as well as the main shock on Wednesday. Credit: Tumbler, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Vibrating alert

The earthquake triggered the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system, which is currently operational in California, Oregon and Washington. Although the quake was ultimately determined to be a magnitude 4.1 after human review, the automated ShakeAlert system estimated its magnitude at as high as 4.5. This may not seem like a big difference, but a magnitude of 4.5 is the minimum an earthquake must reach for a cell phone alert to occur. Anyone within the octagon labeled MMI 3 in Figure 2 — in other words, the vibration of light on the modified Mercalli Intensity scale — who has previously downloaded a ShakeAlert-powered app (such as MyShake) will likely have received an alert. Additionally, anyone with an Android phone inside this octagon should have received a push notification letting them know there was a small earthquake nearby.

ShakeAlert estimates the intensity of shaking likely to occur in the area surrounding the epicenter. The alert is issued to people inside those octagons. Credit: USGS

People who receive a warning from ShakeAlert likely don't have more than two seconds left. People closest to the epicenter – people in the city of Corona, for example – only received alerts after they felt the shaking. This is called the delayed alert zone (formerly referred to as the blind zone). In general, warning times are longer for larger earthquakes that affect a wider area.

The Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system is only triggered for earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater, so no WEA messages were sent for this earthquake.

If you are in the area and feel this earthquake, notify the USGS. And don't forget that if you feel shaky, the USGS recommends falling down, covering yourself and staying still.

Copyrights

Text © 2024 Tumbler. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We publish our work – articles and maps prepared by Temblor – under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

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Alka Tripathi Lange is a freelance science writer based in Chandler, Arizona, and holds a Ph.D. In earth sciences.

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