True enough, missing on the high side is not as big a deal as missing on the low side.

BTW, the quake is now listed as a 6.6, which puts it technically outside the predicted magnitude range. Although there is that 5.3 aftershock ten minutes later... :)

Perhaps I'm just be pedantic, but my argument is to eliminate the ambiguities in predictions that lead to arguments like "what is Northern California."

One of the major problems in quake prediction and the evaluation of the results is the predictions leave too much open to interpretation and speculation, which leads to argument and distrust, which in the end, makes both the prediction and the evaluation pretty much useless.

Brian