We find remarkable similarities between regional body waves recorded by the TERRAscope network of broadband stations and synthetics constructed from a standard southern California velocity model. This model is shown to be effective for a variety of azimuths and ranges throughout southern California. At short periods some of the relative timing of the body waves are discordant, but at longer periods this becomes less of a factor. Thus we have developed a waveform inversion technique to rapidly determine source parameters using stored Green's functions for events out to 500 km, well outside the TERRAscope network. Often, only the three-component records of a single station are required because the ratio of SV to SH energy is dependent upon source orientation. Sensitivity analyses examining the effects of source mislocations and velocity model on the inversion results show that the long-period body waves appear relatively insensitive to lateral mislocations but are sensitive to source depth. However, the choice of velocity model can be a factor in obtaining reliable estimates of source depth. In this study the October 24, 1990, (Mw=5.2) Lee Vining and the December 3, 1991, (Mw=5.1) Baja California events are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the inversion method. For the Baja event, we obtained unique results using a single station. For the Lee Vining event, inversions using a single station were not as stable. However, we found that using two stations with only a 24¿ aperture provided enough constraint to obtain unique results. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1993