On Thursday afternoon local time (December 5), a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the coastal waters of Northern California, triggering a brief tsunami warning. Residents of California took to social media to share videos and images, discussing the scenes they witnessed or felt during the earthquake.
The National Weather Service in the United States stated that before the tsunami warning was lifted, approximately 4.7 million residents in California and Oregon were under threat of a tsunami warning.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake had a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) and its epicenter was located in the sparsely populated coastal area of Ferndale, west of Humboldt County in Northern California, about 39 miles (63 kilometers) away.
The National Tsunami Warning Center issued alerts to a large area along the U.S. West Coast, extending south from the Oregon coast from the city of Sand City for 400 miles (643 kilometers) to San Jose in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Berkeley Police Department issued evacuation orders for parts of the San Francisco Bay, sending alerts to residents stating, “A tsunami is about to hit West Berkeley.”
According to data from PowerOutage.us, around 19,000 households in Humboldt County experienced power outages, whereas the outage situation was nearly non-existent before the earthquake struck.
User @anatlus89 shared a video online, describing it as “crazy” (link
here
).
“When did our pool turn into a wave pool, oh my god, this is insane. It’s still rolling 10 minutes later; it feels like a 6.0 earthquake happened nearby along the coast,” @anatlus89 posted on X.
User @NorthWindAerial posted after receiving the earthquake alert, mentioning that water overflowed from his swimming pool. “This is something new,” he said in a video (link
here
).
Other users, such as @cryptovondoom, also posted videos showing waves surging in their pools (link
here
).
Residents inside buildings in California also felt the impact of the earthquake. User @Sarah Stierch shared a post (link
here
), mentioning that although she didn’t feel the shaking, the office lights in Sonoma were definitely swaying.
Sonoma, California, is located north of San Francisco, approximately 232 miles south of the earthquake epicenter near Petrolia.
Residents in the state capital of Sacramento reported on social media, saying, “My dog started barking like crazy, and then our lights suddenly shifted.”