M4.4 Earthquake near Lospalos, Timor Leste — 19 April 2026

Light earthquakes are widely felt near the epicentre and can rattle windows, dishes and hanging objects. Damage is uncommon and usually limited to cracked plaster or fallen loose items.

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake radiates roughly 60 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 298, which is below the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

What the magnitude scale actually measures →

The epicentre was located at -6.1199, 127.6180 — 274 km north-northeast of Lospalos. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 4.1 earthquake 6 km southwest of here on 14 February 2026.

At 395 km this was a deep-focus earthquake, occurring well inside the subducting slab rather than in the crust. Deep events are rarely damaging even at large magnitudes, though they can be felt over very long distances.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size is often felt across the surrounding area. Its deep focus normally weakens surface shaking while spreading perceptible motion over a broad area.

Read more on how focal depth changes what you feel →

The USGS record does not carry a link to NOAA tsunami information. That field is not an all-clear and does not state whether a tsunami occurred. In this case, a damaging tsunami would be less likely because at M4.4 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 395 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly; it occurred inland rather than beneath the sea floor. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

How earthquakes generate tsunamis, and what the alert levels mean →

3 further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre in the seven days after this event, the largest of them magnitude 4.6.

177 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 5.9 event near Lospalos on 28 March 2026. This M4.4 event released about 178 times less energy than that event.

How long aftershock sequences last, and how large they get →

This earthquake is part of the April 2026 worldwide record. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.