Overview
- The alert posted just after 8:06 a.m. local time placed a magnitude 5.9 event near Dayton/Carson City and was removed from USGS feeds within minutes.
- MyShake and Wireless Emergency Alerts pushed the warning to users across western Nevada and into the Sacramento area and San Francisco Bay Area.
- Regional seismic networks and local agencies reported no shaking or recorded waves consistent with a quake of that size.
- USGS officials, including Paul Earle, described the warning as an errant message and said the agency is investigating the cause.
- USGS explains that automated detections can misfire due to noise, misidentified seismic waves or conflicting network solutions, and experts say a fully false alert of this type is rare.