🌍 Earthquakes today — live map

How to read the earthquake map

Each circle is one earthquake. Its size shows the magnitude, and its color shows how recent it is: red for the past hour, orange for the past day and yellow for anything older. Drag the map to move around, use the mouse wheel or pinch to zoom, and tap a circle to see the place, time, depth and magnitude. The same earthquakes are listed below the map; tap one in the list to open its full USGS event page with shaking maps and “Did you feel it?” reports.

What the numbers mean

• Magnitude measures the energy released. The scale is logarithmic: each whole number is about 32 times more energy, so a magnitude 6 releases roughly a thousand times more energy than a magnitude 4.
• Depth is how far below the surface the rupture started. Shallow earthquakes (less than about 70 km) usually shake the surface harder than deep ones of the same magnitude.
• Felt counts the people who reported feeling it to the USGS. A small, shallow quake under a city can collect thousands of reports.
• Tsunami marks events in an ocean region that are large enough for the warning centers to evaluate. It is not a warning by itself. Official warnings come from tsunami.gov and your local authorities.

Rough guide to magnitudes

• Below 2.5: usually not felt, but recorded by seismographs. There are hundreds every day, mostly where monitoring networks are dense, such as California, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
• 2.5 to 5.4: often felt, rarely causes damage.
• 5.5 to 6.0: slight damage to buildings is possible.
• 6.1 to 6.9: can cause serious damage in populated areas.
• 7.0 and above: major earthquakes; there are about 15 a year worldwide.

Why do some places show so many earthquakes?

The “all sizes” views include tiny earthquakes, and those are only detected where there are many seismometers. That is why California, Nevada, Alaska and Hawaii fill up with dots while other active regions look quiet. For a fair worldwide picture, use the magnitude 4.5+ views. Most large earthquakes happen along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, from Chile and Mexico up through Alaska, Japan and Indonesia, and along the belt from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas.

Using “Near me”

Press Near me and allow location access. The map centers on you, every quake in the list shows its distance, and you can sort the list by Closest to me. Your position is only used inside this page to work out distances; it is not sent anywhere. In an emergency, follow your local civil protection agency, not a map.