That quake this morning was just a baby

The sharp jolt that woke a bunch of people at 3:18 this morning was just a magnitude 3.7, but it was right under a pretty big population: a little north and east of LAX, and three miles south of Culver City. All blue on the shake map, though quite widespread.

Meanwhile: Some seismologists are revising — upward — their view of how bad the big one could be in Southern California, based on the unexpected strength of a strike-slip quake in Sumatra this past April. "As our research has shown, we don't really know what's possible," said Victor Tsai, a CalTech geophysicist. The Sumatra quake had a magnitude of 8.6 and involved a number of strike-slip faults, the type we have to worry about here beside the San Andreas.