Alaska Earthquakes Today

Where to look for today's Alaska earthquakes

The Alaska Earthquake Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks operates the state seismic network and locates earthquakes across Alaska, working with the USGS. Its results feed the USGS catalog, which the EQRadar live map displays. The Center's own website also shows recent earthquakes and explains notable events, often with more local detail.

Alaska is huge, so zoom in on the area you care about, such as Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, Fairbanks or Kodiak. A magnitude 5 out in the western Aleutians may be hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town, while a magnitude 4 under the Matanuska-Susitna Valley can be felt by many people.

Reading an Alaska earthquake listing

Most of Alaska uses Alaska Time, which is 9 hours behind UTC in winter and 8 hours behind in summer. The western Aleutians use Hawaii-Aleutian Time, one hour earlier. Check whether a listing shows UTC or local time before comparing it with what you felt.

Depth is especially important in Alaska. Because the Pacific plate sinks beneath the state, many earthquakes under Anchorage and Cook Inlet occur tens of kilometers deep, and some are well over 100 kilometers deep. Deep earthquakes tend to be felt over wide areas but with gentler shaking than a shallow quake of the same size. Our 3D depth explorer shows this sinking slab clearly. As elsewhere, the first Magnitude is automatic and may change after review, and remote events can take a little longer to refine.

Why Alaska has so many earthquakes

Along the Aleutian Trench, the Pacific plate dives beneath the North American plate in a Subduction zone that stretches from the Gulf of Alaska to the far western Aleutians. This megathrust boundary produces most of Alaska's largest earthquakes. The sinking plate also generates deeper earthquakes under the mainland, like the one that struck Anchorage in 2018.

Inland, the crust is broken by large faults, including the Denali fault, which produced a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in 2002. Southeast Alaska is bordered by the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault system, where the plates slide past each other. Read more about plate boundaries in our lesson on how plates move.

Alaska's great earthquakes

The 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake on March 27, magnitude 9.2, is the largest earthquake in U.S. history and the second-largest ever recorded worldwide. It lasted several minutes, caused landslides in Anchorage and lifted or dropped large areas of the coast. Most of the deaths were caused by tsunamis, which struck Alaskan towns such as Valdez, Seward and Chenega and traveled as far as California.

Tsunamis and volcanoes

The National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, issues tsunami alerts for Alaska and the rest of the U.S. mainland coasts. A large earthquake along the Aleutian subduction zone can send a Tsunami onto nearby shores within minutes. If you are on the coast and feel strong shaking or shaking that lasts a long time, move to high ground or inland immediately without waiting for an official warning. Our tsunami page shows official NOAA alerts.

Alaska also has more than 50 volcanoes that have been active in historical times, most of them along the Aleutian arc. The Alaska Volcano Observatory, a partnership of the USGS, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the state geological survey, watches them closely. Earthquake swarms beneath a volcano are often one of the first signs of unrest. See our volcanoes page and the lesson on volcanoes and earthquakes.

If you felt an earthquake in Alaska

Drop, Cover and Hold On until shaking stops. In winter, think ahead about staying warm if power fails, and in hilly areas watch for landslides and rockfalls. After the shaking, check for injuries and damage, and expect aftershocks; after the 2018 Anchorage earthquake, thousands of aftershocks were recorded in the following months. Report your experience to USGS Did You Feel It?, and check our risk page for any official aftershock forecast.

ShakeAlert, the USGS early warning system, was built for California, Oregon and Washington; check its website for the current coverage area. Either way, many Alaska earthquakes strike close to where people live, so preparation and quick reactions matter most.

Frequently asked questions