A 3.1 magnitude earthquake jolted the Midpeninsula Sunday at 9:28 a.m., centered in Los Altos near Springer Road and Foothill Expressway.

The depth of the quake was 2.1 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

In Mountain View, the temblor felt like a single jolt, one resident reported.

View the map of the epicenter.

Jocelyn Dong

Jocelyn Dong

Jocelyn Dong

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27 Comments

  1. Woke us up this morning! Exactly at 9:28. Felt like someone slammed the front door and the house vibrated for a second. Went to look up if there had been an earthquake because we couldn’t really tell.

  2. Felt it. I moved into a doorway for fear of a larger quake immediately after. Probably good to have these small quakes to release the pressure along the fault though.

  3. Does that map show the exact epicenter? It looks like it hit right by Andronicos on Foothill Xwy. Wonder if anything fell off of the shelves.

  4. I felt it, it woke me up. It felt like a jolt then a slight short rumble. It did not last long and it was mild. I also thought it might have been the wind.

  5. So in conjunction with the minor earthquake there was last year, does this mean we can start to expect a lot more from the Monta Vista fault?

  6. I live in a first floor condo in the PA/LA/MV triangle, and I felt it. There were two loud bangs — I thought my neighbors had slammed their doors really hard — until the shaking. This was the first time in my life I ran underneath a door jamb. According to USGS, it was felt as far as Boulder Creek and parts of Santa Cruz. Is Monta Vista a spur of San Andreas??

  7. First it sounded like someone slammed a door hard and then there was a sharp jolt…like somebody really heavy fell upstairs…I didn’t feel any shaking though.

  8. A friend of mine lives near the Nob Hill/Marshalls Mall on Grant Rd.
    She says the 9:30am earthquake’s jolt was felt in two short successions. The first jolt was heavier in that her dwelling actually shook. The duration of the EQ was less than 5 seconds. She reported no damage was done.

  9. Definite felt the first one and it’s the closest epicenter of a quake I felt in memory.

    I was on the second floor then heard a crack then the rumbling of the earth. I figured it was a low 3 at the time, I’m pretty good at guessing the Richter ratings since I’ve lived here my whole life.

  10. Where I live, we have three or four earthquakes most evenings. That is, right along the Caltrain corridor, when the freights go by. It’s about 3.0 on the Richter scale.

  11. According to the USGS web-site that area has had 6 small earthquakes in the past 48 hours. Only the two largest are reported here. Another 2.4 was deeper and an other three 1.x earthquakes happened also.

  12. I live about 100 yards from a mapped fault called the Berrocal fault. On the fault map linked-to in this article, look for Palo Alto Foothills Park. You’ll see a black line running through it. That’s the Berrocal and a geologist once told me it is capable of a 7.0 quake. He said if that ever happened, my property (south of the fault) would gain about a foot in elevation. Yippee!

  13. Earthquakes? Those were tiny and I felt nothing… Of course, I haven’t felt too many earthquakes since the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Now that was an earthquake.

  14. Kathy Hobson reportedly claims that her dog “came out and looked at me and said what’s going on”? according to this Weekly story. Yikes! Once dogs start talking, I’m preparing for the big one.

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