Two back-to-back earthquakes that struck early Wednesday near Lake Tahoe were followed by several aftershocks with rumblings felt across parts of two states.
There were no reports of damage, but shaking was reported more than 200 miles away in Las Vegas and San Francisco.
The U.S. Geological Surveys said the two magnitude 5.7 quakes were both centered in a remote area of Nevada near the California line, about 70 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe. The moderate quakes, which struck at 12:18 a.m. PST and then four minutes later, were followed by a series of smaller aftershocks.
A magnitude-5.5 quake also was reported around 1 a.m. in the same area.
The Mineral County Sheriff's Department in Hawthorne, Nevada, near the epicenter, said staffers felt both quakes, but they have not had any reports of injuries or damage. The office said the quakes apparently did trigger burglar alarms at two businesses, and caused a rock slide that did not block a nearby highway.
In addition to Lake Tahoe, the USGS said the quakes were felt in Carson City, Nevada, and Yosemite National Park and Mammoth Lakes in California, all roughly 60 miles from the epicenter.
There are several known active faults in Nevada with the most activity reported in the area east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Graham Kent, director of the university lab in Reno, said researchers have been studying the seismically active region along the Sierra's eastern front more intensely since a swarm of thousands of smaller earthquakes were recorded there over a two-month period in 2011.
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Tens of thousands of microquakes are reported in the state each year, but the region also has produced much stronger quakes of magnitude 6 or more. In 1954, a magnitude-7.1 earthquake was followed just a few minutes later by a magnitude-6.9 earthquake in the western part of the state.
