M4.4 Earthquake near South Sandwich Islands region — 31 August 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.

That is about 19:53 local solar time at the epicentre, in the evening.

The epicentre was located at -56.0847, -28.0768. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 5.7 earthquake 4 km south-southeast of here on 20 May 2026.

At 148 km this was an intermediate-depth earthquake. Energy from events at this depth spreads out before it reaches the surface, which usually means weaker shaking near the epicentre than a shallow quake of the same magnitude, but shaking felt across a wider area.

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 intermediate depth normally reduces peak shaking near the epicentre compared with a shallow event of the same magnitude.

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 148 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

No further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre since this event was recorded.

71 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 6.4 event near South Sandwich Islands region on 11 July 2026. This M4.4 event released about 1,000 times less energy than that event.

21 earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, 0 of them in the past 30 days.

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