Southern California Hit by Tiny Earthquakes Every 3 Minutes, Study Finds

The U.S. Geological Survey shows an earthquake monitoring station near the Lusardi Creek County Preserve, San Diego County, Calif., on June 1, 2018. USGS via AP

WASHINGTON—There’s a whole lot of shakin' going on in Southern California—10 times more than seismologists had thought. But most of those earthquakes are so tiny that no one feels them.

Using a more accurate way of finding teeny tiny earthquakes, scientists counted 1.8 million of the temblors in Southern California from 2008 to 2017, according to a report in Thursday’s journal Science. The current catalog of quakes for the area has just under 180,000 for that decade.