Magnitude 7.7 Earthquake – 68 km NNW of Ende, Indonesia (earthquake.usgs.gov)

182 points by Bender 7 hours ago

insaider 6 hours ago

Is this big enough to produce a Tsunami? Apparently maybe only a small localised one, but I'm supposed to be getting the ferry from Lombok to Bali shortly and two of those have already burnt down the last 2 weeks!

decimalenough 6 hours ago

A ferry in the open ocean is one of the safer places to be during a tsunami. Remember, it's not a surf-style wave, but a gradual increase in water level.

throwaway894345 3 hours ago

boarding the ferry may not be the most pleasant, however.

Polizeiposaune 4 hours ago

Indonesia's tsunami bulletins appear to be here:

https://rtsp.bmkg.go.id/publicbull.php

They've declared the event over - some waves were generated but nothing particularly large. Bulletin 3 for the recent quake includes wave height observations - maximum reported was 94cm; most were under 50cm.

Grimburger 6 hours ago

Tsunamis are only an issue close to shore. In the ocean it's barely a mild wave.

In a boat going further out is the safest thing you can do if there's a tsunami warning.

stelliosk 43 minutes ago

Depends on how the tsunami was created. By earthquake or by land slide. For example, the following tsunami no boat is safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbre_Vieja_tsunami_hazard

wahnfrieden 5 hours ago

Safer than going inland..?

lostlogin 4 hours ago

wiml 6 hours ago

I've seen "possible tsunami" pre-warnings, and a sea level gauge at/near Lembar showing sea level oscillations - so I would recommend keeping a close watch on some information source that's better than HN comment threads, yes.

lostlogin 4 hours ago

Correct, but also, I’d bet there is a lurking tsunami expert here somewhere. Nothing is ever too niche for HN.

Melatonic 23 minutes ago

bdickason 5 hours ago

I would upgrade the ferry and make sure to get a high quality one given all the swell in the ocean already (most of bali had 6ft+ waves yesterday) and this incident. Not worth the risk.

seanmcdirmid 3 hours ago

Lombok will have lots of higher ground at least. You really just have to be careful on and near the beach.

yxhuvud 4 hours ago

Easily big enough, but how deep it was generated and how the movements happened do impact the risk a lot.

reilly3000 6 hours ago

Safe travels, friend.

pestatije 5 hours ago

the tsunami risk is negligible compared to the fire risk

insaider 2 hours ago

Agreed, currently aboard and on high alert, pray for me HN

bdickason an hour ago

rootsudo 5 hours ago

Interesting times for the ferry indeed

CookieCrisp 6 hours ago

I know large earthquakes are effectively random (ignoring aftershocks) but this feels like a lot this year, yeah?

HaloZero 4 hours ago

Yeah, I looked this up and USGS literally has a page about this.

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/why-are-we-having-so-many-or-so-fe...

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.

You can see a map of ALL the 7+ here:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=-89.0318...

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)

astrobe_ 2 hours ago

I've always wondered if the melting of glaciers would move masses from one place to another and induce some tectonic moves. But the mass is most likely not significant enough; water/ice has a relatively low density after all.

dev1ycan 2 hours ago

teacpde 6 hours ago

Yea, feel like a lot of big ones this year, but looking it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_2026 it is actually not necessarily worse than previous years.

marcosdumay 3 hours ago

Given we are barely beyond half of the year, that puts us close to the outlier that was 2023 in the 7+ range.

2023 also had a strong el-niño event.

ortusdux 6 hours ago

76 quakes ranking 7.0+ so far this decade, including 10 this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_2021%E2%80...

keeda 3 hours ago

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.

beloch 4 hours ago

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).

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.

-------

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_swarm

jeffrwells 5 hours ago

HN highlighting a lot this year, is all

kermatt 6 hours ago

LeBit 6 hours ago

> 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.

jwilber 4 hours ago

goda90 6 hours ago

Why does this page say there have been 0 >2.5mag earthquakes this year?

teraflop 5 hours ago

jtfrench 4 hours ago

It does feel like a lot

burnt-resistor 6 hours ago

So Google Earth says the ocean depth at the epicenter is 6,286 ft / 1,916 m, but I couldn't find a corresponding tsunami alert or evaluation of risk.

mikeyouse 6 hours ago

Looks like it was a strike-slip fault, so a much lower tsunami risk compared to a subduction / dip-slip fault.

lightedman 4 hours ago

Beachball (moment tensor) says it's a thrust fault with a ton of lateral movement (aka attempted subduction.) https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000tkt2... eyeballs filled in are pretty much thrust faults and horizontal like that means subduction-possible movement.

ttul 3 hours ago