Long-term data (since 1900) indicates that, on average, there are 16 major earthquakes each year, including 15 magnitude 7 quakes and 1 magnitude 8 or greater. Over the past 40-50 years, we've ...

About 55 earthquakes a day – 20,000 a year – are recorded by the National Earthquake Information Center. A quick guide to how they are measured.

Earthquakes, large and small, happen every single day along zones that wrap around the world like seams on a baseball. Most don’t bother anybody, so they don’t make the news.

Earthquakes are less frequent in the eastern part of the U.S. when compared to the West Coast, but they have occurred in every state east of the Mississippi River, according to the USGS.

The earthquakes are the deadliest to occur in the world since a massive 2005 quake in Pakistan killed more than 70,000 people. In 2011, nearly 20,000 people were killed after a 9.0 quake off of ...

Aftershocks from devastating earthquakes in the 1800s near the Missouri-Kentucky border and in Charleston, South Carolina, may still be occurring, a study found.

Earthquakes and fires always stalk L.A. But our greatest danger is denial Burning embers swirl as hand crews work to contain the wind-driven Hughes fire on Jan. 22. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) ...

Japan completed the world’s first real-time ocean floor earthquake detection system in June 2025, giving 20 seconds more earthquake warning and 20 minutes more tsunami warning. The network spans ...

But if you look at the big picture, at more earthquakes, the way seismologists do, you shouldn’t see significant patterns, Hough said. Earthquakes seem to happen at any hour of the day.

Supershear earthquakes are more likely to happen along long, mature faults like the San Andreas, where many years of activity have ground away a lot of the twists and bumps that might slow down an ...

Earthquakes can be like Jell-O. A simple, yet often used analogy is that if you're sitting in a valley or basin, it acts like a bowl of gelatin and it will shake more than surrounding rock. But ...

A new catalog of Southern California earthquakes is 10 times larger than its predecessor list. The details of frequent, small quakes help scientists study what triggers large, destructive ones.