Photo: USGS
A 5.8-magnitude earthquake was reported in China on Thursday (December 4), according to the United States Geological Survey.
The earthquake was centered about 5.8 miles north-northwest of Tumxuh, at a depth of 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles). The USGS said it received 13 reports of people having felt the earthquake at the time of publication.
There is currently no tsunami threat in effect, according to South China Sea Tsunami Advisory Center. The 5.8-magnitude earthquake was the only one reported in China during the past 24 hours, while the country has had two in the past seven days, five in the past 30 days and 186 in the past year, according to EarthquakeTrack.com.
The Chinese earthquake was reported on the same day that the USGS shared and removed a report of a 5.9-magnitude earthquake within a 30-minute span.
The earthquake was reported to have struck near Dayton, Nevada, at 8:06 a.m. local time and was reported to have a depth of nearly five miles. The post was then deleted as of 8:20 a.m. local time, with the USGS confirming that it was investigating the situation in a post shared on its ShakeAlert X account.
"@USGS #ShakeAlert confirms that the earthquake alerts that were delivered at 8:06am are cancelled. There was no M5.9 earthquake near Carson City, NV. We are currently looking into why the alerts were issued. We'll provide more information when we learn more @Cal_OES @CAGeoSurvey," the post states.
Earthquakes measured between 2.5 and 5.4 magnitude can be felt by a large population, however, rarely results in much damage, according to Michigan Tech via the Sacramento Bee. Alaska is among the states where earthquakes are most commonly reported in the U.S., along with California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, as well as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
An estimated 500,000 detectable earthquakes are reported worldwide annually, however, around 100,000 are felt and only 100 typically result in serious damage. Officials strongly advise that anyone caught in an earthquake should drop, cover and hold on, according to the Sacramento Bee.