Small Quake Off Oregon Coast Sunday After Little Swarm of Quakes This Week
Published 07/29/2018 at 6:52 PM PDT
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff
(Yachats, Oregon) – After a string of almost a dozen minor quakes last week, the waters off the southern Oregon coast rumbled with yet another small quake on Sunday morning. (Graphic courtesy USGS).
The U.S. Geological Survey said a magnitude 5.3 quake occurred shortly after 7 a.m., approximately 280 miles west of Florence, Oregon.
There was no tsunami alert issued, and there are no reports of it being felt on land. The quake was about seven miles beneath the sea floor.
It requires at least a 7.0 magnitude quake to generate a tsunami.
A string of 10 quakes happened Tuesday morning, mostly about 125 miles west of Gold Beach. The largest was a 5.6 magnitude.
Although the region will at some point produce a massive subduction quake and tsunami, USGS scientists say this isn’t the sign of the big one. Small quakes like this are common along the fault lines off the Oregon coast. A network of them runs parallel to the coast, stretching some 600 miles long along the western U.S., called the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
Measurements of earthquake magnitudes are extremely wide, although the increments may appear small. A 7.0 is 1,000 times bigger than a 4.0, according to the USGS. But it is 31,622 times stronger in its release of energy. Stay up-to-date with Oregon, Coast Earthquake Updates - Live Data Oregon, Washington, California, Tsunamis.
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