M4.4 Earthquake near Los Angeles, CA March 17, 2014

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(Updated 10:45 PDT 3/17/2014)

A moderate earthquake occurred this morning at 0625 am PDT.  It was centered at a location 9 km NNW of Westwood, CA, where the University of California at Los Angeles is located.  A screenshot from the Open Hazards Hazard Viewer is shown below:

 

Drawing a circle around the center of Los Angeles, we find that there is a significant probability of an M>5 event within the circle during the next year (45%), and a probability of a larger event M>6 in the region (29%) within the next 3 years.  A table of forecast probabilities is shown below.

We can also use the Hazard Viewer to compute the chance of a M>5 earthquake occurring during the next 1 year in the circle of radius 100 km.  This probability is shown for the past 5 years as the blue curve below.  The figure shows that the chance of a significant earthquake has generally been decreasing of late.  It hit a high of nearly 80% following the April 4, 2010 El Major-Cucapah (N Baja Mexico) earthquake, and has since fallen to about 45% as noted above.

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