Last Thursday , a 6.4 - order of magnitude temblor murder California near the city of Ridgecrest , about 240 kilometer ( 150 mile ) North - East of Los Angeles . The quake happened at a depth of or so 11 kilometers ( 7 miles ) . This sizeable shudder turn out to be a foreshock .

The next day at 8:19pm local clock time , a 7.1 - magnitude quakehit or so in the same area but at a much shallower depth ( only 0.9 kilometers/0.56 miles ) . This was the strong seism in California in the last 20 years , and was also felt   in the neighboring state of Nevada and all the room down to Mexico . home and roadstead were   damaged , with some “ venial to temperate ” level injuries but no fatalities .

Scientists at theUnited States Geological Survey ( USGS ) have estimated that there ’s less than a 1   percent chance that one or more of the aftershock will be equal to or more powerful than the 7.1 - magnitude quake . Around 55 to 120 aftershocks higher than magnitude 3 are likely to be felt near Ridgecrest   over the next week .

When the forecast was write during the weekend , the USGS had registered 359 tremors magnitude 3   or higher . Five of them were higher than magnitude 5 , which are powerful enough to damage buildings and base .

Since the original quake , almost 5,000 additional tremorshave been registered in the area , and while the vast legal age of them can only be discover with   seismometers , scientists and locals are keeping an eye out for anything that might be big and more dangerous . By the end of the seismal cloud , six sentence more tremor might be register .

“ No one can predict the exact time or place of an earthquake , including aftershocks . Our seism prognosis give us an understanding of the fortune of having more quake within a yield time period in the stirred area . We calculate this earthquake forecast using a statistical analysis based on past earthquakes , ” the USGS write ontheir web site .

California is site on many different systems of shift , with the   biggest one being   the San Andreas Fault that stretches for 1,200 kilometers ( 745 mi ) across the state . Many anticipate that a crushing earthquake , significantly more powerful than the one last workweek , will finally pip the state .   However , the July 5th   earthquake was   not a prelude to the Big One or link up to the San Andreas Fault . Instead , it happened on a different , distant flaw organization .

[ H / T : BBC News ]