The ground under Southern California

Data through Sep 5, 2026. Windows are measured against the newest event we hold, not the clock — the mirror ingests the USGS daily feed once a day, so late-day quakes appear the next morning.

Notable quakes — M2.5 and up, last 30 days

Roughly the size where a quake starts being felt near its epicenter, depending on depth and distance. Locations are USGS's own place names — most of these are tens of miles or more from Los Angeles.

"Felt reports" are USGS Did You Feel It? submissions as counted while the event was in the daily feed we mirror; totals keep growing on USGS's site afterward, so these are floors. Each location links to the USGS event page.

Almost all of it is a hum you never feel

95% of the 4,250 quakes on record here are below magnitude 2.0 — under the rough line where anyone notices, and detectable only by instruments. The biggest event we've recorded is a M4.4 2 km ESE of Frazier Park, CA on July 12, which drew 6 felt reports. For the full picture of the region's background rate and what it takes for a quake to be felt, read our finding: the Southern California earthquake hum.

The latest recorded quakes

Findings from our data

• What Los Angeles actually calls 311 about
• How fast — and how often — LA actually closes a 311 request
• The most common building LA breaks ground on is a backyard home
• The two speeds of an LA building permit: instant, or months of plan check
• How LA talks to 311: questions by phone, work orders by app
• LA's busiest 311 day on record wasn't Angelenos — it was paperwork
• LA's 311 falls off a cliff every weekend
• 1% of LA's building permits carry half its construction value
• Southern California has an earthquake every half hour — you feel almost none of them
• The two Los Angeleses: where the city builds and where it complains barely overlap

All findings →