A moderate earthquake with an epicenter in Lake County gave portions of Northern California a new year’s rattle, according to seismologists.
The earthquake occurred at 6:34 p.m. Pacific time and was initially registered as a magnitude-4.7 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It struck at a depth of just over a mile beneath the surface , based on measurements by seismographs, the agency said.
The quake epicenter was 2 miles north-northwest of Cobb, a small community in the hills south of Clear Lake. The epicenter was 70 miles west of Sacramento and 27 miles north of Santa Rosa. A ShakeAlert was issued to cellphone users in portions of Lake, Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties, according to the USGS.
Wednesday’s temblor was relatively small compared with December’s magnitude-7.0 earthquake, which struck 40 miles off the coast of Mendocino County. The fault slip on Dec. 5 triggered a tsunami alert that was briefly activated. Four days later, a magnitude-5.5 quake in a remote Nevada desert was widely felt in the Sacramento region.