SAN DIEGO — Music fans lodging, camping and raging in the Coachella Valley may have been swayed when a gentle, magnitude-3.8 earthquake struck the area Saturday morning.
The temblor struck at 9:08 a.m. just north of Borrego Springs, a San Diego County desert town about 60 miles south of the Empire Polo Club in Indio, home of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, according to U.S. Geological Survey information.
The temblor, minor as it may have been, was felt in a large swath of Southern California, a region of more than 20 million people. USGS data shows that residents reported feeling at least weak intensity from the shaker at locations from the U.S.-Mexico border to near the southern Orange County coast and into the vast desert.
The temblor struck about 7 miles beneath the surface, the USGS said.
It wasn’t clear if the earthquake erupted on a specific fault, but it was not far from the West’s most-feared fault, the San Andreas, which runs through the center of the Coachella Valley en route to the lowlands of the Salton Sea.
Borrego Springs is about 60 miles southwest of the fault.
Chuck Westerheide, spokesperson for San Diego County's emergency and public safety services, said no damage was reported.
At Coachella, where Orange County band No Doubt was reuniting for a much-anticipated performance Saturday night, there didn’t appear to be a lot of concern.
Some music fans on social media used the occasion to blame the shaker on the power and reach of their favorite Saturday-night headliners, including Tyler, the Creator.
Organizers didn’t mention the temblor on the official Coachella account on social media platform X.
Instead, on Saturday morning they touted that they were “building the energy for day two” of the festival’s first of two weekend lineups.
