EARTHQUAKEM5.0

M5.0 earthquake near Sand Point, Alaska

Map: the earthquake near Sand Point, Alaska, with plate boundaries

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck 50 mi (81 km) south of Sand Point, Alaska on Tuesday, October 20, 2026 at 10:40 UTC, at a depth of 22 mi (35 km), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Shallow quakes like this one shake the surface hardest.

USGS set its tsunami flag for this earthquake. The flag is set automatically for large earthquakes at sea and is not a warning. For official tsunami information, see tsunami.gov and your national warning center.

4 people reported feeling it to USGS “Did You Feel It?”.

MagnitudeM5.0
Depth22 mi (35 km)
Time (UTC)Oct 20 10:40
Location54.61°N 160.33°W
Nearest townSand Point · 81 km
Energy477 tons TNT
Aftershocks M2.5+5
Tsunami flagSet (not a warning)
Felt reports4
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Why here?

This earthquake struck about 69 mi (112 km) from the boundary between the North American and Pacific plates. Most earthquakes happen along plate boundaries like this one, where the pieces of Earth’s outer shell collide, pull apart or grind past each other. Stress builds up over years until the rock suddenly slips.

The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.

What kind of fault?

USGS’s analysis of the seismic waves shows it was a normal-fault earthquake: the crust was being stretched, and one block dropped down relative to the other.

How strong was it?

Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 5.0 released roughly the energy of 477 tons of TNT. That is about 32 times the energy of a magnitude 4.0, a quake people nearby feel but that rarely causes damage. The strongest earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960, released about 5,600,000 times more than this one.

Aftershocks

In the first 6 days after it, USGS recorded 5 smaller earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more within 62 mi (100 km). The largest was a magnitude 4.2 on October 23 at 06:44 UTC.

Earthquake history here

Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 90 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:

Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.

See every earthquake on October 20, 2026 or earthquakes by day.

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