Earthquakes recorded within 300 km of Neiafu in the last 30 days, magnitude 4 and above, from the USGS feed — and who issues a real tsunami warning for Vavaʻu.
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From Town Tools. For the current version, visit https://www.towntools.org/neiafu-vava-u-to/earthquakes-felt-in-vavau
The list below is the US Geological Survey's catalogue, and here it is coarser than you might expect. In the twelve months to 22 October 2026 it held 218 earthquakes within 300 km of town, and every one of them was magnitude 4 or above — not a single smaller event was recorded inside that radius all year. Vavaʻu feels quakes that never reach magnitude 4, and none of them can appear here, so an empty list means the global network logged nothing that size, not that the ground was still.
Tonga Meteorological Services runs its own analysis and does not always agree. For the quake felt in Neiafu at 9:05 am on 2 October 2024, Tonga Met published magnitude 6.8, 189 km south-east of Neiafu; USGS has the same event at magnitude 6.6, 125 km south-east. Both are honest readings of the same ground, and Tonga Met's is the one that counts here — it is also the office that decides whether there is a tsunami threat, and that morning it said there was not.
The Shaking column is thinner again, because USGS fills it from intensity reports the public sends in and very few come from Tonga. Of the 13 quakes it listed inside this radius in the 30 days to 22 October 2026, only 2 carried any intensity figure at all, and the magnitude 7.5 of 24 March 2026, the largest quake near Vavaʻu in twenty years, drew nineteen reports. Read a blank there as nobody having filed a report, not as nobody having felt it.
Strongest in this window
M5.5
123 km west of Neiafu · Weak — felt by some indoors ·
14 earthquakes of magnitude M4.0 or larger within 300 km of town in the last 30 days.
Strong or long shaking on the coast is itself a reason to move, and you do not need anyone to confirm it first. Leave the water — the wharf, the market, the moorings — go inland and uphill on foot, and stay up there until there is an official all-clear. Tonga Meteorological Services is the office that issues tsunami warnings for Tonga: after the magnitude 7.3 east of Neiafu on 11 November 2022 it told residents to stay inland and on high ground and to keep listening to the radio, and told boats to move away from the reefs into deep water. Radio Tonga 1 carries those bulletins on 1017 kHz AM, the only AM transmitter in the country and the one signal that reaches Vavaʻu when the internet does not. The island sirens, donated by Japan, are tested once a month, and the National Emergency Management Office handles the response on the ground.
This page is not an earthquake warning
Every quake here was recorded after it happened — no one can predict earthquakes, and this page cannot warn you of one. What it can do is show what the ground has been doing lately. If you feel a long or violent quake near the coast, act on the advice above without waiting for any alert.
Tonga Meteorological ServicesThe service that issues tsunami warnings for Tonga, and where the cyclone maps, seasonal outlooks and Neiafu tide tables are kept.
Pacific Tsunami Warning CenterThe regional centre in Hawaii, which issues Pacific-wide threat messages; the warning for Tonga itself comes from Tonga Met.
USGS — latest earthquakesThe catalogue this page reads, with every recorded event on a map and a page of detail per quake.
Why the ground moves here
The Tonga Trench runs north–south a little east of Vavaʻu, where the floor of the Pacific bends down beneath the Tonga plate. You can read its shape off the catalogue: the quakes east and south-east of Neiafu are shallow, 10 to 40 km down, while the ones to the west sit 100 to 340 km down, inside the slab as it descends. What that boundary produces, counted on 22 October 2026 within 300 km of town: 218 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or more in the previous twelve months, 31 of magnitude 5 or more, 12 of magnitude 6 or more in the previous three years, and three of magnitude 7 or more in the previous twenty.
Those three are recent enough to remember. A magnitude 7.3 on 11 November 2022, about 205 km east-south-east of Neiafu and 37 km deep, put a tsunami warning over Tonga and American Samoa until the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the threat had passed. A magnitude 7.0 on 31 March 2025 broke 184 km due south, near Pangai in Haʻapai. And on 24 March 2026 at 5:38 pm a magnitude 7.5 struck 158 km west of Neiafu, 234 km down: Tonga Meteorological Services warned the country, cancelled the warning for Tongatapu, Haʻapai, ʻEua and the Niuas at 7:18 pm, and kept it in force for Vavaʻu. A magnitude 5.1 aftershock followed at 6:22 pm, and the only wave recorded anywhere was about one foot, at Neiafu at 6:30 pm.
Depth is most of the difference between a quake that is felt and a quake that is only recorded. The deep events west of here arrive as a long slow roll and usually do nothing more; the shallow ones nearer the trench are the ones that break things. In 2024 they broke the cable: earthquakes cut the domestic fibre-optic cable on 29 June and again on 26 August, the second time about 41 km from Nukuʻalofa, leaving Vavaʻu and Haʻapai on satellite until it was repaired in the first week of September. Tonga Cable put that fragility down to a seabed still unsettled by the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption of 15 January 2022, which its acting chief executive said would take three or four years to stabilise. That eruption's tsunami did its damage on Tongatapu and in Haʻapai and had little physical effect on Vavaʻu, but it buried the same cable, which was not replaced until July 2023. Worth knowing about this page: it needs that cable, and the radio does not.
Matangi Tonga — earthquake coverageLocal reporting on the quakes and warnings named above, including 2 October 2024 and the 2024 cable breaks.
Vavaʻu Port Officer guideA resident-written guide to the island, version 2026/18, and the source for the monthly siren test and the red tsunami radios; a large PDF on a metered connection.
Tonga Expats and LocalsThe Facebook group where island news usually travels first, in Tongan and English.
Checked 22 October at 9:59 pm. Earthquake data from USGS (U.S. Geological Survey, public domain). Magnitude, depth and felt intensity are revised as analysis improves, and very fresh quakes can take minutes to appear.