Earthquake: 4.8 earthquake near San Simeon reported erroneously

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake was reported Saturday morning 13 miles from San Simeon, Calif., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblor occurred at 4:33 a.m. PDT at a depth of 54.1 miles.

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FOR THE RECORD

9:02 a.m.: This post is incorrect, with the USGS reporting that sensors in California misidentified seismic activity from a magnitude 7.8 quake that struck off the coast of Japan several minutes earlier.

“It’s bogus,” said John Bellini, a USGS geophysicist. “When the waves from these big quakes hit [the Northern Californian sensor] network they think it’s a local quake. They have some kind of filtering system, but it’s not working properly. There is some problem with that on their end.”

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According to the USGS, the epicenter was 27 miles from King City, 33 miles from Greenfield and 34 miles from Paso Robles.

In the last 10 days, there have been three earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.

This information comes from the USGS Earthquake Notification Service and this post was created by an algorithm.

Read more about Southern California earthquakes.