For more than a month, the Bay Area has been subjected to a seemingly ceaseless stampede of earthquakes — the latest in a series of seismic swarms that have rattled windows and raised fears across California.
The latest swarm has been centered in the East Bay suburb of San Ramon, where a magnitude 4 earthquake struck Friday night — the largest since the cluster began — and a magnitude 3.9 on Saturday night. Since Nov. 9, there have been at least 80 earthquakes of magnitude 2 or greater in the area, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
While none of these quakes has been particularly potent — which was also the case in similar swarms recorded in Malibu, El Sereno and Ontario since 2024 — some fear the persistent seismic activity could foreshadow a back-of-mind concern for many Californians: the “Big One.”…