I blame Bush.

There are always a lot of earthquakes. But when they get clumped together it seems like it is abnormal. It is like shark attacks. There aren't more shark attacks, it just gets more attention. For a more scientific perspective, there was an Ask Mefi question after the Chile quake.

I subscribe to the USGS feed of 2.5+ quakes. Since the Mexicali quake on Sunday, there's been hundreds of quakes in the general area. It is making my Texas cat very edgy. Seems she just is able to nod off when the house shakes again (nothing big, but my closet doors shake which makes her think there's monsters in there). She won't even wake up if something below at 3.5 hits more than 100 miles away. She's not been happy about moving to California. My other cat doesn't seem to care and will probably sleep through "the big one"

(there have been 4 earthquakes since I started typing this... one in Puerto Rico and the others in SoCal/BC)

Outside the SoCal/BC area, Indonesia is always on the list. And Alaska and Chile.

Oklahoma gets a 3 ish quake about once a week. Almost like clockwork. In the past few days I saw one in Yellowstone.

It would be interesting to see a timeline of 7+ earthquakes to see how often they occur, and where they occur. I imagine there's a lot we don't hear about.

Earthquake stats - If my math is correct, that says 30/week of mag 5 or greater.

That sounds about right, Ardiril.

I actually sort of miss earthquakes, now that I'm not living in California anymore. Not the big ones (I was pretty young during the Loma Prieta quake, but the helplessness involved is one of my earliest memories), but a little 5-pointer is a good way to get the adrenaline flowing.

Isostatic rebound.

The media has been hyping earthquakes since the ones in Haiti and Chile happened. A small California earthquake was in the national news last month. It really wasn't newsworthy. And the news made the recent earthquake near Mexicali sound like it happened in Los Angeles when it was actually hundreds of miles away. As Ardiril's stats show, it is just business as usual. So rest easy :)

Some more info from the USGS.

I miss earthquakes too.