Nevada ranks third among the 50 states (behind California and Alaska) for the frequency of earthquakes. Still, there's a big difference between the earthquakes of California and Nevada. In the former, experiencing earthquakes is almost commonplace. In the latter, earthquakes are recorded all the time, but they're rarely directly experienced. However, when they are, it's often a big deal.
Since the 1850s, 62 earthquakes with magnitudes of 5.5 or higher (on the Richter Scale) have occurred in Nevada. The largest was a 7.3 quake in central Nevada in 1915; 1954 was a major year for quakes, with 6.6, 6.7, 7.1, and 7.2 temblors registered a little east of Fallon, which is 50 miles east of Reno.
More recently, a 6.0 quake in Wells, in northeastern Nevada, on February 21 damaged an entire block of downtown buildings; Wells is still rebuilding. And in the past few weeks, a series of hundreds of quakes, most tiny but a number in the 4s, have hit the Reno metropolitan area.
On April 24, temblors of 4.1 and 4.2 were recorded six miles west of Reno, in the Verdi/Boomtown area near the California state line. A day later, on Friday April 25, the big quake of 4.7, the one that made the national news, hit the same area just before midnight; it was large enough to wake up the entire city and caused some damage to houses near the epicenter and stores around the valley, where stock fell from shelves. A 4.2 aftershock occurred in the same area on April 28.
Most of the major earthquakes occur in central and western Nevada, from Reno out to eastern Churchill County and down to a bit northwest of Las Vegas. The closer to Las Vegas you get, the smaller the quakes. Still, plenty are registered in southern Nevada and a seismic survey conducted by a UNLV geophysicist for the Department of Energy studying the Nevada Test Site and nuclear repository determined that Las Vegas will sustain a magnitude 6.5-7 earthquake someday.
