Earthquake rattles Northern California near Ukiah -- biggest in California since 2022

Rick Hurd and Paul Rogers, The Mercury News on Jun 24, 2026

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The largest earthquake in California in more than three years shook a rural part of southern Mendocino County on Wednesday morning, causing power outages and disruption near Ukiah.

The magnitude 5.6 quake was centered about seven miles north of the small community of Redwood Valley in Mendocino County near Ukiah, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The ground shook about 8:10 a.m. Pacific time.

“So far, thank goodness, it doesn’t look like it has been terribly damaging,” said Sarah Minson, a research geophysicist with the USGS Earthquake Science Center at Moffett Field. “The shaking intensity was strong right over the source but it decayed fairly rapidly there wasn’t a large area impact.”

The quake was the largest earthquake in the state since Dec. 20, 2022, when a 6.4 quake hit near the small town of Ferndale on the Humboldt County Coast.

The depth of Monday’s earthquake was about 5 miles below the the earth’s surface.

The quake is believed to have occurred on the Maacama Fault, Minson said, which is a northern extension of the Hayward Fault.

“I grew up in Willits,” she added. “I know that area very well. It is wine country around there. The epicenter is a very rural area.”

There were early reports of some power lines down. It was not known immediately whether there were any injuries.

Minson said that like much of California’s landscape, the Maacama Fault which runs through Sonoma and Mendocino counties, shaped the landscape of the region starting millions of years ago.

“If you drive up Highway 101 there, it connects a bunch of valleys, each of which have a little town in it,” she said. “Basically that is the fault system. The faults formed those valleys. It’s sort of like when you are on Interstate 280 on the Peninsula. That’s basically the San Andreas Fault.”

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