Wiggle Room

California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said in the first statewide temblor forecast. Boy, did they give themselves a cushion.

New calculations reveal there is a 99.7% chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97% versus 93%. And somehow those two add up to 99.7% - again, a cushion of a forecast.

The last time a jolt that size rattled the state was the 1994 Northridge temblor, which killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage. For those of you not aware of what that means in terms of power, it woke me from my sleep. After a night of heavy pot smoking. In Santa Barbara, over 80 miles away.

Even without the chinese arithmetic that led them to the conclusion, a child could have made a similar prediction. California is one of the most seismically active regions in the world with more than 300 faults crisscrossing the state, and sits atop two of Earth's major tectonic plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, but most of them are too small to be felt.

The analysis is the first comprehensive effort by the USGS, Southern California Earthquake Center and California Geological Survey to calculate earthquake probabilities for the entire state using newly available data. Previous quake probabilities focused on specific regions and used various methodologies that made it difficult to compare.

For example, a 2003 report found the San Francisco Bay Area faced a 62% chance of being struck by a magnitude 6.7 quake by 2032. This new study increased the likelihood slightly to 63% by 2037. For the Los Angeles Basin, the probability is higher at 67%, even though is no past comparison for the Los Angeles area. Again, I don't see the parallel to 93 or 97 or even 99.7%, but that's what's so great about this new study - you can basically make up whatever you want and it would be near impossible to disprove.

Scientists admittedly still cannot predict exactly where in the state such a quake will occur or when, but why let that stop making guesses for headlines?