There’s a certain DC news station that keeps writing stories about these mythical checks

once an alert is out there, even if USGS determines it to be false (probably why it was deleted), there's no way to undo the alarm sent out. You don't get an alert that says "lol, jk... that quake wasn't real"

My guess is that some USGS monitor had a hiccup and the initial alerts don't go through human review because there isn't time and there's alot of amateur infrastructure set up around it.

So when there's junk data from a malfunction or oversensitive it sets off a lot of alarms it didn't intend

The point named in the alert is only about 10 mi W of Carson City

The coordinates of the alert are way too close to a population center for a nuclear test to go unnoticed.

the pushback I'd give on that is that it's not where the historical nuclear testing ground is (that's closer to Las Vegas)

what I'm mildly concerned about is that if they see the writing on the electoral wall they take increasingly larger and more destructive actions

and they've got the actual winter weather advisory upcounty