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ALASKA QUAKEDID THE GROUND SHAKE NEAR YOU?

Southcentral Alaska · 61.52°N

Earthquakes near Big Lake

Reading the latest USGS reports for the ground near Big Lake…

Live sections load from the USGS feed. If the feed does not answer, this page says so — it never fills the gap with old numbers.

Recorded USGS earthquakes from the last 7 days, magnitude 2.5 and larger, within 250 km of Big Lake. The dashed pale circle is a true 250 km radius around Big Lake; amber rings are the recorded epicenters, sized by magnitude; small cream squares are the other towns, and the ringed cream marker is Big Lake. If the USGS feed does not answer, the coastline, ring, and marker still show — and no events are plotted.

Most felt near Big Lake — last 7 days, within 250 km

Recent near Big Lake — last 7 days, M1.0 and larger within 250 km, newest first

Every event links to its USGS event page, the authority for that earthquake. Distances are measured from Big Lake, not copied from the feed's place names.

The biggest on record near Big Lake — USGS catalog, as recorded

The five largest earthquakes recorded within 200 km of Big Lake since 1900, from USGS catalog pulls made November 8, 2026. Pre-instrumental magnitudes are estimates, and catalog completeness varies by era — the fine print is on the about page.

How often does the ground move here?

226 earthquakes of M4.0 or larger were recorded within 200 km in the last 10 years — one of the most active rates. Many of them are aftershocks of the November 30, 2018 M7.1 Anchorage earthquake, so the count overstates the lone-event rate. Since 1900 the catalog holds 1106 M4-or-larger events within the same radius.

Big Lake felt the November 30, 2018 M7.1 hard — its epicenter at Point MacKenzie was only about 19 km away — and the area sits on soft lowland ground between the Castle Mountain fault and the Cook Inlet sedimentary basin.

Southcentral Alaska — why it shakes

Southcentral Alaska sits above the place where the Pacific Plate slides beneath North America — the Aleutian megathrust. That collision built the Alaska Range and produced the two largest earthquakes in recorded U.S. history. Most of the region's shaking comes in three flavors: megathrust earthquakes offshore in the Gulf of Alaska and Prince William Sound, earthquakes inside the sinking Pacific slab 30 to 150 km down (the kind felt as a long roll across the whole region), and shallow breaks on crustal faults like the Castle Mountain fault in the Matanuska Valley.

New to the numbers? What magnitude means explains the scale in plain words — including why a whole step is about 32 times the energy, and why what people feel is not the same as damage.

Big Lake on the sister sites

Daylight in Big Lake — sunrise, sunset, and day length.

Aurora over Big Lake — tonight's northern lights outlook.

Goose Creek, Knik Arm, Cook Inlet — the nearest tide station in the fleet's inventory, 15 km from Big Lake.