Matched catalogs do not show a clear late decline in Ridgecrest's 95th depth percentile for M 2.5 or more on days 1-30

We tested whether the upper depth tail became shallower after the 2019 Ridgecrest M7.1 earthquake. We matched USGS ComCat event IDs to the SCEDC 1981-2019 v0 waveform-relocated catalog. The main sample has 448 events on days 1-7 and 331 on days 7-30 at preferred magnitude 2.5 or more. Twelve common 10 km cells were given fixed area weights. The ComCat 95th depth percentile changed by -0.180 km, with a conditional daily block 95% interval of -0.690 to +0.500 km. The same events with GrowClust depths gave -0.099 km, with an interval of -0.645 to +0.505 km. The paired difference was also uncertain. All twenty daily intervals for the 95th percentile across ten settings included zero. Some three-day ComCat intervals changed sign, and only two early three-day blocks were available. Matching and common support removed all three early ComCat events deeper than 14 km from the main sample. Thus, this result cannot test the deepest-event evidence in earlier work. The study does not establish stable depth or a physical recovery mechanism. It provides fixed source extracts, code, all resampling draws, figures, a source audit, and an exact numerical repeat. Related catalogs, selected events, depth error, and block assumptions limit inference.

Ridgecrest · aftershock depth · upper depth tail · catalog comparison · GrowClust · SCEDC · spatial standardization · conditional block uncertainty · null result · reproducibility