🚨Horrible: Shaken by quake,Kīlauea volcano erupt today,warn further eruption and risk tsunami Lava
Feeling occasional earthquakes is part of the experience of living in the State of Hawaiʻi, especially on the Island of Hawai‘i. The vast majority of felt earthquakes are small, but the less common large earthquakes can be damaging, so it is important to be prepared. The US Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) records tens of thousands of earthquakes beneath our islands every year. Luckily, most of these are less than magnitude-2, and are not felt. Over the past 30 years, Hawaiʻi has had four earthquakes of magnitude-6 or larger. Three of them were deep (greater than 12 miles or 20 kilometers) and likely the result of the stresses brought forth by the Hawaiian Islands sitting on top of the Pacific plate.
The most recent example was the magnitude-6.2 earthquake that struck 17 miles (27 kilometers) south of Nā‘ālehu, a few minutes before midnight on Oct. 10, 2021. The other one was a magnitude-6.9 on May 4, 2018, which is the largest earthquake recorded in Hawaii in the past 30 years. This event was much shallower (less than 9 miles or 15 kilometers) and was likely related to magma moving through the Kīlauea plumbing system at the start of the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption. whether these large, shallow earthquakes under volcanoes lead to eruptions, or if it is the magma shifting stresses along faults that trigger earthquakes.
