EUREKA – (INT) - An M6.0 earthquake Thursday was far enough off the Northern California-Oregon coast that not many people reported feeling it. But, there could be more to come.

In a new study, published in the journal Science, a team of seismologists used a unique strategy to paint a new picture of the Mendocino Triple Junction — one of California’s most seismically active regions off the Humboldt County coast — and its risk of a megaquake.

“A lot of times we’re analyzing big earthquakes to understand how these big faults move, but in this case we’re actually looking at the tiniest earthquakes happening all the time,” David Shelly, a research geophysicist and first author of the study, told SFGATE. “The better that we understand how the plates are moving, the better job we can do to estimate seismic hazard.”

Many of the state’s largest earthquakes have struck near the junction, where the Pacific, North American and Gorda plates meet. This area also forms the boundary between two infamous threats: the San Andreas Fault system, which runs across most of California, and the Cascadia subduction zone, which goes up to Vancouver Island, Canada.

Story Date: January 18, 2026