Magnitude 7.7 Earthquake – 68 km NNW of Ende, Indonesia
190 points - today at 1:14 AM
SourceIs 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
today at 2:32 AM
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.
aziaziazi
today at 8:33 AM
After the tsunami, would the current induce by the water drawback may disrupt the ferry ability to come back ? I wonder if the ocean “rise” again (water on top of water) or if it’s more a current-style (water push water) movement.
throwaway894345
today at 4:52 AM
boarding the ferry may not be the most pleasant, however.
Polizeiposaune
today at 4:16 AM
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
today at 2:32 AM
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.
wahnfrieden
today at 3:45 AM
Safer than going inland..?
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
today at 3:55 AM
Correct, but also, I’d bet there is a lurking tsunami expert here somewhere. Nothing is ever too niche for HN.
Melatonic
today at 7:57 AM
There's a tsunami warning list you can sign up for. As well as global earthquake alerts. In my experience they arrive very quickly
Usually earthquakes on land don't trigger tsunamis but are more damaging locally
bdickason
today at 3:15 AM
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
today at 4:58 AM
Lombok will have lots of higher ground at least. You really just have to be careful on and near the beach.
Easily big enough, but how deep it was generated and how the movements happened do impact the risk a lot.
reilly3000
today at 2:21 AM
Safe travels, friend.
pestatije
today at 2:52 AM
the tsunami risk is negligible compared to the fire risk
Agreed, currently aboard and on high alert, pray for me HN
bdickason
today at 7:03 AM
Let us know you made it ok!
Interesting times for the ferry indeed
alekstret
today at 8:36 AM
This morning, when I woke up, I checked the phone notifications. I saw some alerts from the LastQuake app that a major earthquake occurred on Flores. I didn't feel it here in Bukit, Bali, where I currently reside.
CookieCrisp
today at 2:09 AM
I know large earthquakes are effectively random (ignoring aftershocks) but this feels like a lot this year, yeah?
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)
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.
It's more likely related to planetary positions and or solar cycle/activity, "recent studies suggest a notable statistical correlation between specific solar magnetic milestones and the shifting phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation"
Like in theory it doesn't make sense that el niño causes earthquakes, yet there seems to be more prominent ones during el niño however if both are related to sun cycle/activity it would make more sense (seeing how the moon affects earth as well)
The deep earth isn't all that well studied, so while we know a fair amount about plate tectonics, there could be hidden factors influencing that action in ways we can't anticipate from recorded history. Who's to say there aren't 1000 or 10k year cycles of earthquakes? Something novel could happen too, but our records don't let us set probabilities for 10k year natural disasters the way we can with 100 year tropical storms, floods, or earthquakes.
> Who's to say there aren't 1000 or 10k year cycles of earthquakes?
The Stratigraphy department of the International Union of Geological Sciences would be the obvious first port of call.
Follow that up with an off book chat with digital archivists for commercial oil and gas exploration geologists.
Melatonic
today at 8:00 AM
Or influence by the moon just as it pulls on oceans. Lot of liquid magma down there.
Or maybe some once in a rare incident involving coronal mass ejections somehow affecting the core of the planet. Could even be a delayed effect.
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
today at 5:39 AM
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.
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.
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
today at 2:59 AM
HN highlighting a lot this year, is all
I was wondering the same: https://www.morageology.com/earthquake_year.php
> 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.
Somehow I don’t think people are confusing raw seismic station earthquake counts with the three back-to-back high profile/magnitude earthquakes that recently occurred in Venezuela, Colombia, and Indonesia.
I understand the point, maybe those recent earthquakes aren’t ood, but still.
Melatonic
today at 8:02 AM
There are also likely a lot of earthquakes we don't notice because they don't effect populated areas. There's a lot of ocean around the ring of fire.
Why does this page say there have been 0 >2.5mag earthquakes this year?
Because this particular sensor network is only monitoring earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest of the USA, not worldwide.
burnt-resistor
today at 2:18 AM
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
today at 2:29 AM
Looks like it was a strike-slip fault, so a much lower tsunami risk compared to a subduction / dip-slip fault.
lightedman
today at 4:05 AM
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.
What is the moment tensor in this context?
numb_code
today at 2:56 AM
[flagged]
navigate8310
today at 2:28 AM
[flagged]