Type-preserving shifts leave no clear magnitude-wait excess in Ridgecrest on days 1-30 at magnitude 2.5 or more

We tested whether larger earthquakes have a shorter following wait relative to the preceding wait in two fixed USGS catalogs. We used events of preferred magnitude at least 2.5 within 100 km on days 1 to 30. The rank correlation between magnitude and log(following wait / preceding wait) was -0.07564 for 929 Ridgecrest events and 0.05148 for 634 Monte Cristo events. Circular shifts in 50-event blocks gave two-sided p values of 0.0240 and 0.2506. After shifts also held preferred magnitude type fixed, the exact reference mean was -0.06918 at Ridgecrest and -0.00187 at Monte Cristo. The p values were 0.8135 and 0.2059. The type constraint accounts for 91.4% of the raw Ridgecrest correlation in this conditional model. A 10 km cell control also left no clear departure at Ridgecrest. A lower magnitude cutoff of 2.0 gave a raw Ridgecrest correlation of -0.01435. These results extend published count-based checks to adjacent waiting times. They show a limit of a catalog diagnostic. They do not establish no physical triggering. The control tests were added after an initial result and a campaign review. Missing events, preferred-type selection, local stationarity assumptions, reused sequence data, and finite windows limit interpretation.

aftershock · Ridgecrest · Monte Cristo · waiting time · magnitude type · null result