Three minor earthquakes jolted across California overnight right along the San Andreas Fault.
The quakes registered in the mid-magnitude 2 range across Northern and Southern California on Sunday.
A small 2.7 magnitude earthquake was detected in Petrolia at around 4:31 a.m., followed by a 2.6 magnitude shake in Santa Barbara near 4:39 a.m, according to a USGS Latest Earthquakes Interactive Map.
Westley was also rattled with a magnitude 2.5 quake on Saturday night.
The red lines on the interactive map represent major tectonic plate boundaries across the world, with the line through California tracing the San Andreas Fault.
Back in August, researchers at San Jose State University uncovered evidence suggesting the San Andreas Fault has been slipping at a faster, more consistent pace than previously believed.
The finding came from research at Sanborn County Park, where scientists examined the landscape for clues left behind by ancient earthquakes.
Scientists concluded that the fault’s movement rate appeared to have stayed constant for nearly 10,000 years rather than slowing down.
Recent major earthquakes that occurred along the San Andreas Fault line were in Loma Prieta in 1989 and San Francisco in 1906.
Another study in Junefound earthquake stress levels reaching its highest in at least 1,000 years along three segments in the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults.
“We have been lucky in California not to experience a large urban earthquake since 1994 on Northridge,” Ahmed Elbanna, director of the Statewide California Earthquake Center and professor of earth sciences and engineering at the University of Southern California told The Sacramento Bee.
“The authors themselves, and the community, do not find the findings of the study surprising,” Elbanna said, adding that Southern California’s crust is “critically stressed and ready to rupture in a large-sized event. Whether that event would happen tomorrow, or in 10 years, that’s the part that we don’t know.”
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