M6.0 Earthquake near Codrington, Antigua and Barbuda — 16 May 2026

Strong earthquakes can cause significant damage in populated areas within roughly 100 km of the epicentre, particularly to older masonry buildings. Landslides and liquefaction become a real risk in susceptible ground.

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake radiates roughly 15,080 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 603, which meets 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 10:45 local solar time at the epicentre, during the morning.

This event was shallower than 100% of the 4 earthquakes recorded in Antigua and Barbuda in our catalogue and stronger than 50% of them.

The epicentre was located at 17.5127, -61.1771 — 70 km east-southeast of Codrington. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 6.1 earthquake 18 km east-northeast of here on 16 May 2026.

The nearest other settlements in our records are Anse-Bertrand (92 km south-southwest), Sainte-Rose (149 km south-southwest), Pointe-Noire (158 km southwest) and Dieppe Bay Town (177 km west).

At 30 km this was a shallow earthquake. Shallow events release their energy close to the surface, so for a given magnitude they produce noticeably stronger shaking — and more damage — than deeper ones. Roughly three quarters of all earthquakes worldwide occur at shallow depths.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size can produce strong, widely felt shaking. Its shallow focus makes stronger surface shaking more likely than for a deeper 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 M6.0 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; it occurred inland rather than beneath the sea floor. 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.

37 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 6.8 event near Beauséjour on 27 October 2025. This M6.0 event released about 16 times less energy than that event.

3 earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, 1 of them in the past 30 days.

This earthquake is part of the May 2026 worldwide record, and of earthquakes in Antigua and Barbuda during May 2026. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.