re: #356 lawhawk

My college geography class was a long time ago, but not sure how large a quake is possible on the fault that ruptured in CA this week. Our understanding of quakes and faults is still evolving.

The faults that ruptured run mostly parallel to the San Andreas fault, and pick up about 30% of the stress. The quakes appear to have triggered motion in two faults running perpendicular to each other.

IIRC, the San Andreas can - in theory - produce up to an 8.3, though though anything bigger than that is considered extremely unlikely.

The 1857 Fort Tejon quake is estimated to have been around 7.9 and that was on the San Andreas; that’s the same estimated magnitude as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.