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Earthquake breaking news, Moderate World Earthquakes Magnitude 5–5.9

Moderate earthquake: M5.3 quake has struck near Hihifo in Tonga


Earthquake location -15.2603S, -173.4744WA moderate earthquake with magnitude 5.3 (ml/mb) was detected on Thursday, 81 kilometers (50 miles) from Hihifo in Tonga. Exact location of event, depth 10 km, -173.4744° West, -15.2603° South. Unique identifier: us2000c1w5. Ids that are associated to the event: us2000c1w5. The 5.3-magnitude earthquake has occurred at 11:10:00 / 11:10 am (local time epicenter). Exact time and date of event in UTC/GMT: 07/12/17 / 2017-12-07 23:10:00 / December 7, 2017 @ 11:10 pm. The epicenter was at a depth of 10 km (6 miles). A tsunami warning has not been issued (Does not indicate if a tsunami actually did or will exist).

Nearest cities/city/towns to hypocenter/epicentrum was Hihifo (min 5000 pop). Nearby country/countries that might be effected, Tonga (c. 123 000 pop). Event epicenter was 85 km (53 miles) from Hihifo (c. 800 pop).

In the past 24 hours, there have been one, in the last 10 days two, in the past 30 days four and in the last 365 days seventy-five earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater that have been detected in the same area. Every year there are an estimated 1320 moderate earthquakes in the world. Earthquakes 5.0 to 6.0 may cause light damage to buildings and other structures.

Questions or comments?

Were you asleep? Was it difficult to stand and/or walk? Leave a comment or report about shaking, activity and damage at your city, home and country. The information in this article comes from the USGS Earthquake Notification Service. Read more about the earthquake, Seismometer information, Distances, Parameters, Date-Time, Location and details about this quake, detected near: 81 km NNE of Hihifo, Tonga.

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More information

Parameter Value Description
Magnitude 5.3 mb The magnitude for the event.
Longitude -173.4744° West Decimal degrees longitude. Negative values for western longitudes.
Latitude -15.2603° South Decimal degrees latitude. Negative values for southern latitudes.
Depth 10 km Depth of the event in kilometers.
Place 81km NNE of Hihifo, Tonga Textual description of named geographic region near to the event. This may be a city name, or a Flinn-Engdahl Region name.
Time 2017-12-07 23:10:00 Time when the event occurred. UTC/GMT
Updated 2017-12-07 23:28:37 Time when the event was most recently updated. UTC/GMT
Timezone offset -720 Timezone offset from UTC in minutes at the event epicenter.
Felt The total number of felt reports
CDI The maximum reported intensity for the event.
MMI The maximum estimated instrumental intensity for the event.
Alert Level The alert level from the PAGER earthquake impact scale. Green, Yellow, Orange or Red.
Review Status reviewed Indicates whether the event has been reviewed by a human.
Tsunami 0 This flag is set to "1" for large events in oceanic regions and "0" otherwise. The existence or value of this flag does not indicate if a tsunami actually did or will exist.
SIG 432 A number describing how significant the event is. Larger numbers indicate a more significant event.
Network us The ID of a data contributor. Identifies the network considered to be the preferred source of information for this event.
Sources ,us, A comma-separated list of network contributors.
Number of Stations Used The total number of Number of seismic stations which reported P- and S-arrival times for this earthquake.
Horizontal Distance 5.088 Horizontal distance from the epicenter to the nearest station (in degrees).
Root Mean Square 1.02 sec The root-mean-square (RMS) travel time residual, in sec, using all weights.
Azimuthal Gap 70 The largest azimuthal gap between azimuthally adjacent stations (in degrees).
Magnitude Type mb The method or algorithm used to calculate the preferred magnitude for the event.
Event Type earthquake Type of seismic event.
Event ID us2000c1w5 Id of event.
Event Code 2000c1w5 An identifying code assigned by, and unique from, the corresponding source for the event.
Event IDS ,us2000c1w5, A comma-separated list of event ids that are associated to an event.

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