M4.6 Earthquake near south of the Fiji Islands — 23 December 2024

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 4.6 earthquake radiates roughly 120 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 326, 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 14:17 local solar time at the epicentre, during the afternoon.

The epicentre was located at -26.9824, -179.8420. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 4.9 earthquake 77 km north of here on 08 March 2026.

At 454 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.

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 M4.6 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 454 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 in the seven days after this event.

29 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 6.5 event near south of the Fiji Islands on 13 April 2025. This M4.6 event released about 708 times less energy than that event.

No other earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, which makes this a genuinely isolated event.

This earthquake is part of the December 2024 worldwide record. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.