Another pretty strong quake felt in SoCal just now

[Torie]

This one was quite strong, and again quite a ways from OC.  It rolled for about 15-20 seconds with a pause. It appears to be centered in the Palm Springs area, so it may have done some damage.

Addendum: LA Times says it was a 5.9 preliminarily. It was 28 miles south of Palm Springs, in the Anza Borrego state park.  This is only about 15 miles maybe from La Quinta, so it was good that it was not stronger.

[Ban my account ffs!]

This one was quite strong, and again quite a ways from OC.  It rolled for about 15-20 seconds with a pause. It appears to be centered in the Palm Springs area, so it may have done some damage.

Addendum: LA Times says it was a 5.9 preliminarily. It was 28 miles south of Palm Springs, in the Anza Borrego state park.  This is only about 15 miles maybe from La Quinta, so it was good that it was not stronger.

I hope you've been taking your Ostocal.. I wouldn't want you to shatter into a million pieces with a moderate earthquake!

Really though, I'm glad to hear it's not too serious... though it seems stronger quakes have been more common than usual this year.. is that the case?  Or is it pretty run of the mill?

Despite what conventional wisdom tells us.. that quakes are random.. I think they're anything but. 

[Lunar]

I remember hearing a year or two ago that the lower San Andreas fault was overdue for a "big one."  

I have an inclination to believe that these smaller quakes could potentially limit some of the probability of a gigantic quake from happening, does anyone know if that inclination is valid? If the plates shift in small movements, that makes it less likely that a more significant shift would occur, right?

Earthquakes scare the crap out of me.  I remember hanging out with my friend once at 4am in my apartment, and being 15 miles away from the epicenter of a quake in Oakland (it was actually at 4:22 am and it was a 4.2 earthquake).  It felt like a stampede of horses was jumping across my roof, and at first I was wondering what the hell my neighbors above me were doing until I remembered I lived on the top floor of my apartment complex and ran to a doorframe.    

One of my earliest memories as a kid is watching Oakland burn on TV while I was in Oakland visiting relatives.  

And the image of the infrastructure that collapsed on the road beneath it always stuck with me (42 died):



Earthquakes are one of the few natural disasters that just happen without warning.  I'd much rather face a tornado that I could at least get some sirens going beforehand on.

The scariest thing about an earthquake is that you get to feel it build up, gradually increasing the shaking of your building, but you don't know when it's going to quit building up.  You don't know if it's going to continue to build and get 10,000 times worse and end up dead as your building collapses on you, or stop all of a sudden.  You just have to stand there and wait to die or not.

[Sbane]

Socal and adjoining parts of Mexico are certainly getting their fair share of quakes. And right around the area hypothesized to be at the greatest risk of producing the "big one". Hopefully these smaller ones will reduce the risk of a bigger earthquake but who knows. Perhaps this is the prelude? Hopefully not. Orange County and coastal SD are probably going to be the least affected area. But the I-10 corridor from LA to Palm Springs could get absolutely destroyed.