A moderate earthquake occurred at 12:18:13 PM (PDT) on Saturday, April 16, 2005.
The magnitude 5.2 event occurred 22 km (13 miles) W of Wheeler Ridge, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 10 km ( 6 miles).
Last week, at just a little past noon, I was sitting on my patio and watching my fish and turtles eat lunch. It was sunny and quiet and I was enjoying one of the first warm sunny days we've had in a long time.
Suddenly, I noticed a big ripple in the pond. It looked like someone had dropped a very big rock into the shallow end and the ripples were flowing up the pond toward me. First one very big ripple, followed by two more of slightly lesser intensity. It was so strange, I got up to walk to the other end to see if somehow one of the bigger rocks had become dislodged and dropped into the pond. I found nothing. After a few minutes, I forgot about the whole thing and went about my day.
It wasn't until I saw the 11:00 pm news later that night that I found out there had been an earthquake at approximately the same time I saw those odd wave-like ripples in my pond that started near the waterfall in the shallower end, and moved the fifty feet or so down the stream bed to the deeper pond area at the other end where I was sitting. I never felt the earthquake, although on the news they said that buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles. My home in Temecula, CA is approximately 200 miles southwest of where the epicenter of the earthquake was pinpointed. Is it possible that an earthquake could cause a mini-tsunami in my backyard pond?
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