A series of earthquakes rattled a section of Monterey County and the surrounding region early this morning, according to the United States Geological Survey.
At 12:51 a.m., a tremor with a preliminary magnitude of 4.5 struck near Fremont Peak State Park, according to the USGS, and had a depth of 5.2 miles, the USGS reported.
The epicenter was 10 miles east-southeast of Prunedale and 45 miles south-southeast of San Jose, according to the USGS.
More than 2,300 people in 170 ZIP codes have reported that they felt the quake, with the strongest shaking felt around Salinas and San Juan Bautista and weak shaking reported as far away as Fairfax and Merced, according to the USGS.
This is the second time since Saturday that the greater Bay Area has experienced a temblor with a magnitude larger than 4.0. On Saturday, an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1 struck east of San Jose and was felt throughout much of the Bay Area, including Palo Alto and other Midpeninsula communities. It is not known whether Midpeninsula residents felt the Fremont Peak quake.
Within an hour of the first tremor, 11 aftershocks rolled across roughly the same area.
Most of the aftershocks had a preliminary magnitude between 1.2 and 2.9, but the largest of the smaller quakes struck at 1 a.m. and had a preliminary magnitude of 3.4, according to the USGS.
The most recent aftershock — one with a preliminary magnitude of 1.3 — shook the area at 1:38 a.m.
When did Monterey become part of the Bay Area?
We thought we felt one on Saturday around 11:30am by the Dish, but I can’t find anything for that day in all of CA at the USGS website.