I know large earthquakes are effectively random (ignoring aftershocks) but this feels like a lot this year, yeah?
Yeah, I looked this up and USGS literally has a page about this.<p><a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/why-are-we-having-so-many-or-so-few-earthquakes-has-naturally-occurring-earthquake-activity" rel="nofollow">https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/why-are-we-having-so-many-or-so-fe...</a><p>According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 16 major earthquakes in any given year. That includes 15 earthquakes in the magnitude 7 range and one earthquake magnitude 8.0 or greater. In the past 40-50 years, our records show that we have exceeded the long-term average number of major earthquakes about a dozen times.<p>You can see a map of ALL the 7+ here:<p><a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=-89.03188,-156.09375&extent=89.01993,682.03125&range=search&listOnlyShown=true&baseLayer=terrain&timeZone=utc&search=%7B%22name%22:%22Search%20Results%22,%22params%22:%7B%22starttime%22:%222025-01-01%2000:00:00%22,%22minmagnitude%22:7,%22orderby%22:%22time%22,%22endtime%22:%222026-01-01%2000:00:00%22%7D%7D" rel="nofollow">https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=-89.0318...</a><p>The search filtering is a bit hard to find in the UI but the parameters in the URL can be modified. (We had 16+ 7.0 last year as a comparison)
Yea, feel like a lot of big ones this year, but looking it up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_2026" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_2026</a> it is actually not necessarily worse than previous years.
76 quakes ranking 7.0+ so far this decade, including 10 this year.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_2021%E2%80%93present" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_2021%E2%80...</a>
Sure feels like it in my corner of the Bay Area, since we had a prolonged earthquake swarm earlier this year, even hitting a record number of earthquakes per day or something like that.
Earthquakes can occur in swarms[1] (distinct from aftershocks), with many of a similar size (i.e. Not a big quake followed by smaller ones) occurring in a small area over "relatively short" periods of time (i.e. days, weeks, or years).<p>The USGS map shows the 7.7 quake being followed by about 19 other smaller quakes near or in Indonesia within just a few hours. These are probably aftershocks.<p>-------<p>[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_swarm" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_swarm</a>
Randomness without clusters probably isn't random.
I was wondering the same: <a href="https://www.morageology.com/earthquake_year.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.morageology.com/earthquake_year.php</a>
> Note: While it may look like there have been an increase in total number of earthquakes since about 2020, this is actually due to the increasing number of seismic stations installed in the park since 2020 that are able to detect smaller (<= 0.5 magnitude) earthquakes. If you look at the number of earthquakes >= 1.0, the rate has remained about the same.
Somehow I don’t think people are confusing raw seismic station earthquake counts with the three back-to-back high profile/magnitude earthquakes that recently occurred in Venezuela, Colombia, and Indonesia.<p>I understand the point, maybe those recent earthquakes aren’t ood, but still.
Why does this page say there have been 0 >2.5mag earthquakes this year?
It does feel like a lot
HN highlighting a lot this year, is all