3.7-magnitude earthquake rattles California’s Bay Area, geologists say

Helena Wegner
·1 min read
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A 3.7-magnitude earthquake rattled California’s Bay Area on Monday, Dec. 5, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.

The 4-mile-deep quake hit about 8 miles southeast of Alum Rock at 3:13 p.m., according to the USGS.

More than 1,000 people from as far away as San Francisco and Sausalito reported feeling the tremor to the agency about an hour after the earthquake.

Alum Rock is a district within San Jose with a population of nearly 12,000.

After the earthquake rattled the south Bay Area, people took to Twitter.

“My cats were waken up. #earthquake,” one person wrote.

“Me randomly opening twitter to find out there was an #earthquake a few mins ago here in the south bay,” another person wrote.

“Pfff, wasn’t even a 4.0,” someone else wrote.

Magnitude measures the energy released at the source of the earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey says. It replaces the old Richter scale.

Quakes between 2.5 and 5.4 magnitude are often felt but rarely cause much damage, according to Michigan Tech. Quakes below 2.5 magnitude are seldom felt by most people.

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