78 earthquakes shake SLO County farm ‘like a snow globe.’ What’s going on?

When the house started shaking, Mandy Evenson picked up her 7-year-old son and dashed outside.

“It was a really hard, sharp shake,” she said. “It felt like I was in a snow globe — like somebody grabbed me and really shook me back and forth.”

The moment she stepped foot on the porch on Nov. 18, the shaking stopped. Her dog, who had been whining all morning, ran outside with them.

The 4.1-magnitude earthquake lasted about three seconds, she said.

The epicenter of that earthquake was right outside her sister’s door at Jack Creek Farms. It was the first of more than 70 measurable earthquakes to rattle the area in recent weeks, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A few photos fell off the walls, but luckily, none of the earthquakes damaged Evenson’s home or any merchandise at the Jack Creek Farms store off of Highway 46.

“Felt like we had a little bubble of protection from God over us,” she said.

USGS geophysicist Mark Germain Alvarez said flurries of small earthquakes are fairly common in California.

“These pockets of activity are not unusual,” Alvarez said. “There’s faults everywhere in California. It’s just the nature of where we live.”

Cal State Northridge geophysicist Julian Lozos said the series of earthquakes since Nov. 18 are likely aftershocks, as they are smaller than the original 4.1-magnitude earthquake and are reducing in frequency.

“Any time you have a fault that does something big, all the other faults around it respond to it,” he said.

Why so many earthquakes?

Jack Creek Farms experienced 78 measurable earthquakes from Nov. 18 to Dec. 22, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Earthquakes always occur on a fault, which is a break in the Earth’s crust where blocks of rock can move back and forth, Lozos said.

Rocks are grippy, so most of the time, the pressure of the Earth holds them together. But when enough energy builds up underground, the plates move — causing an earthquake, he said.

“Faults really are a lot like us,” Lozos said. “They hold it together under a lot of pressure until they can’t anymore, and then they flip out.”

Jack Creek Farms isn’t on top of a major fault, like the Rinconada Fault that stretches under Paso Robles and Santa Margarita.

Instead, it sits atop a smaller one.

When a major fault splits and moves, it forms secondary faults — similar to the way a large crack in a car windshield can spread, cutting smaller cracks in the glass.

The Templeton earthquakes were likely caused by movement in a secondary fault, according to Alvarez and Lozos.

The fault seems to cut into the Earth at an angle, allowing the sides of it to move vertically during an earthquake — meaning one side moves up relative to the other.

Lozos said this earthquake likely happened on the same fault that caused the 2003 San Simeon Earthquake.

He said earthquake activity like this is common in California, which endures between 700 and 1,000 earthquakes per week.

For those wondering, a series of small earthquakes does not indicate that a larger earthquake is coming. In fact, small earthquakes tend to relieve pressure in the Earth’s crust, Lozos said.

Templeton struck by more than 70 aftershocks

During the past 75 years, the Templeton area experienced 2,125 earthquakes, according to USGS data.

Of those events, the 4.1 earthquake on Nov. 18 was the largest with a local epicenter.

“This area has a ton of earthquakes, but they’re mostly quite small,” Lozos said.

The Nov. 18 earthquake was the first the Templeton area experienced in more than a month, he said. The 77 earthquakes that followed have been smaller and surround the epicenter of that first earthquake.

The number of earthquakes has also decreased with time, Lozos said.

The majority occurred on Nov. 18 and Nov. 19, and they’ve reduced in frequency since then — with only four during the past week, he said.

Before Nov. 18, the last 4-magnitude earthquake happened in 2016.

Prior to that, the area endured quite a few small aftershocks in 2003 after the San Simeon Earthquake, which struck 11 kilometers north of San Simeon on Dec. 22, 2003.

Evenson’s family was decorating the Christmas tree at Jack Creek Farms when the San Simeon Earthquake rolled their way.

She remembered looking out the window and saw the trees swaying. Her dad yelled, “tornado,” then the whole house started to shake.

Evenson’s dad laid on top of her and her sister just before the Christmas tree fell on top of them — but luckily no one was injured.

Tons of merchandise in the farm store fell off the shelves and broke during that 2003 earthquake.

“We’re just grateful that this one didn’t do that,” she said of the November earthquake.

At Jack Creek Farms, she said they’re feeling a bit shaken up by the most recent series of earthquakes, but they’re not entirely surprised by all the activity.

“That’s part of living and growing up in California,” she said.

This story was originally published December 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.