Magnitude-2.9 Earthquake Jolts Peninsula

A magnitude-2.9 earthquake struck the Peninsula Wednesday night, according to the USGS.

The temblor reported at 8:24 p.m. and within the San Andreas Fault system was centered in Ladera, just a few miles from the Stanford University campus and downtown Palo Alto, with a depth of 2.6 miles. The shallow quake was felt by residents in the area who reported feeling a "quick jolt."

"Wow, so close we felt it hard!" Laure Cetin said in a tweet to NBC Bay Area. "Very short though."

Others who felt the quake thought it might be connected to the magnitude-6.0 quake that struck the Napa region on Aug. 24.

Stanford employee Yoo-Yoo Yeh initially thought Wednesday's small quake was an aftershock.

"But when I looked it up I saw it's supposed to southwest of us," she said. "So that's a little more concerning."

The last major rupture of the San Andreas Fault was the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta quake in 1989.

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