M 5.1 mb Earthquake Hits South Sandwich Islands Region
A magnitude 5.1 earthquake was recorded by USGS near South Sandwich Islands region. On the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program scale, M5.1 is classified "Moderate". Among the 1,701 earthquake reports Areazine has published, this M5.1 event ranks stronger than 65% of them (rank #448 by magnitude).
Read this earthquake report in 30 seconds
- Magnitude
- M 5.1
- USGS class
- Moderate
- Location
- South Sandwich Islands region
- Archive rank
- #448 of 1,701
- Source
- USGS
- Published
- September 12, 2026
Stronger than 65% of the 1,701 earthquake reports in Areazine's archive, weaker than 447 others.
Record status: a point-in-time USGS detection. Aftershocks, revised magnitude, and felt-report data continue to update on USGS's own event page after publication.
What Happened
A magnitude 5.1 mb earthquake struck the South Sandwich Islands region on 2026-09-12 at 12:55:08 UTC. The event was recorded at a depth of 10 km.
Location Details
The earthquake was centered at latitude -59.1348, longitude -24.9274 in the South Sandwich Islands region. A depth of 10 km is classified as shallow (less than 20 km).
Impact Assessment
No felt reports were recorded. There was no tsunami advisory (tsunami flag: 0) and no alert level was issued.
What You Should Know
This was a moderate earthquake. Minor aftershocks are possible following events of this size.
Source
Data from USGS: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000tgvr
Original source: USGS Official Notice ↗
Related Earthquakes
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Two Areazine-derived peer sets for this USGS earthquake report: nearest notices by body length and by same severity near the same agency date. Peers come from other categories so they are not the same-feed Related list above.
Similar body length
Nearest notices by article body length (690 characters here).
Similar severity timing
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