It's been a shaky year! The 4.9 earthquake on 12/2 and again on 12/11 could be felt on the west side of Mono Lake.  The epicenter was in the Candelaria Hills, NV in the Mina Deflection zone. The Mina Deflection has been pretty active this year with over 15,000 earthquakes! There have been 24 earthquakes of 4.5+ size since 4/11/20 in the Mina Deflection zone, that are big enough for us to feel. Many of us felt the 6.5 earthquake that occurred on 5/15/20 in the early morning. The epicenters are in the Monte Cristo Mountains and Candelaria Hills, NV half way between Tonopah and Mono Lake. A few quakes were in the Excelsior Mountains on the east side of Mono Lake.

 The Mina Deflection is a rotating block of land between the White Mountains and the Bodie Hills. Picture the Mina Deflection as a rotating chunk of earth bound by faults. It is the warp zone between the Eastern Sierra faults (e.g. the White Mountain Fault, Fish Lake Valley faults, Owens Valley Fault) that are moving in a NW direction and the Walker Lane Faults also moving in a NW direction but not in the same way. These faults aren’t perfectly parallel to each other and they aren’t moving at the same rate. Like a piece of play dough rolled between your hands, the clockwise rotation of the Mina Deflection absorbs the strain between these two western Great Basin fault systems.