A 3.1-magnitude earthquake rumbled in the Santa Barbara Channel Sunday evening, with the epicenter located 14 miles southwest of Isla Vista and 19 miles southwest of downtown Santa Barbara. These sized earthquakes happen almost everyday in California, according to Jessica Sigala from the National Earthquake Information Center. “For California this is pretty small,” she said. Anything measuring between 3.0 and 3.9 is classified as “minor.”

There had been 173 people in 24 zip codes who felt the earthquake and reported it to the U.S. Geological Survey as of Monday afternoon. Most of the responses came from people in the Goleta and Isla Vista coast, as well as the Ojai area. Reports came from residents as far away as Santa Monica. The closest seismic station was about 20 miles away from the epicenter, while the furthest seismometer to pick up the vibrations was roughly 50 miles away.

The largest earthquake in California history was a 7.9-magnitude quake in 1857 near Ft. Tejon. A 1929 earthquake in Santa Barbara registered 6.8 on the Richter scale and killed 13 people.

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