EARTHQUAKEM5.1

M5.1 earthquake near Lospalos, Timor Leste

Map: the earthquake near Lospalos, Timor Leste, with plate boundaries

A magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck 164 km (102 mi) northeast of Lospalos, Timor Leste on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 07:44 UTC, at a depth of 123 km (76 mi), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. At this intermediate depth, shaking spreads out before it reaches the surface. The nearest city of a million or more people is Makassar, Indonesia, about 999 km (621 mi) away.

1 person reported feeling it to USGS “Did You Feel It?”.

MagnitudeM5.1
Depth123 km (76 mi)
Time (UTC)Oct 21 07:44
Location7.56°S 128.14°E
Nearest townLospalos · 164 km
Energy674 tons TNT
Aftershocks M2.5+1
Tsunami flagNo
Felt reports1
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Why here?

This earthquake struck about 172 km (107 mi) from the boundary between the Australian and Timor 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. At 123 km down, it most likely broke inside a plate that is sinking into the mantle beneath its neighbor, in what geologists call a subduction zone.

The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.

How strong was it?

Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 5.1 released roughly the energy of 674 tons of TNT. That is about 45 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 4,000,000 times more than this one.

Aftershocks

In the first 5 days after it, USGS recorded 1 smaller earthquake of magnitude 2.5 or more within 100 km (62 mi). It was a magnitude 4.5 on October 23 at 12:24 UTC.

Outside the United States, USGS mainly lists quakes of about magnitude 4 and up, so smaller aftershocks there are undercounted.

Earthquake history here

Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 119 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 21, 2026 or earthquakes by day.

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