A 4.6-magnitude earthquake rattled Monterey County on Monday and was felt more than 90 miles away in San Francisco, officials said.
The quake hit at 11:31 a.m. about 13 miles northeast of Gonzales, near Salinas, and was followed by nine smaller aftershocks, with the largest measuring magnitude 2.8, said Annemarie Baltay, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.
There were no reports of injuries or damage.
Baltay said the quake occurred on the San Andreas Fault, close to an area where the Calaveras Fault branches off. The quake happened at a depth of about 4 miles.
She said there was no indication that the tremor was a harbinger of a bigger earthquake.
“This is really typical behavior,” Baltay said. “It’s as if someone put an oil can into the fault and lubricated it.”
There have been 51 small earthquakes in the same general area in the past decade, including a magnitude-4.6 shaker in 2011, Baltay said.
Monday’s quake was felt in Monterey, Morgan Hill, San Jose and as far north as San Francisco.
“We felt it here,” said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Monterey. “It lasted about five seconds. There was a little bump and then a rolling motion. One of my colleagues said it made him feel seasick.”
