The long-held stereotypes about living in California are absolutely, undeniably true — it’s always sunny, the people are beautiful, the beaches are even better, and there’s avocado on literally everything. What’s not to love?!
But the one thing people never tell you about living in the Golden State is that it comes with the agony of constantly living in fear of earthquakes. It’s bad enough when one ‘quake shakes you awake from your precious sleep, but a new threat has emerged that’s putting that terror on a whole new level: There’s now a SWARM of earthquakes hitting California. As in, MULTIPLE earthquakes.
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More than 600 small earthquakes have struck central California’s Mammoth Lakes region in a mere 36 hours. The quakes, which started Thursday, have ranged in magnitude from 1.0 (“ehh, can’t even feel it”) to 3.8 (“WTF was that?!”).
Experts say it’s one of the largest earthquake swarms in the past decade, which frankly sounds terrifying. But residents of the area are reportedly totally lax about this sitch — after all, they live in a region known as the Long Valley Caldera, a volcanic region that gets minor earthquakes on the reg.
The U.S. Geological Survey isn’t completely alarmed, either. It reports that “despite the several felt earthquakes, this is still rather modest activity compared with the much more energetic swarms occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. We do not see any evidence for anomalous ground deformation associated with the swarm at this time.”
That’s all well and good, but we’d probs be hightailing it out of that quake-filled place right about now, to be totally honest. Just sayin’, is living in California *really* worth it?
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