Earthquakes near Kunming, 1927–2026

It was also the deadliest: NOAA records 15,621 deaths for it. 10 earthquakes here in these years are on NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes. NOAA records deaths in 6 of the events here, 15,650 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 5 on August 12, 2018 (37 km E of Yuxi, China).

• August 12, 2018Earthquake · M 5.037 km E of Yuxi, ChinaUSGS · NOAA NCEI
• April 18, 1985Earthquake · M 5.8Yunnan Province · 23 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI
• January 4, 1970Earthquake · M 7.122 km SSW of Yuxi, China · 15,621 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia

• An event counts for Kunming when it began within 100 km of its centre, or 200 km for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more. Damage can reach further.
• USGS counts here start at magnitude 6: the catalogue’s smaller quakes thin out going back, where few instruments listened.
• NOAA lists significant events only: earthquakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami, and eruptions and tsunamis by like measures. Magnitudes before 1900 are its estimates from written accounts.
• Deaths are NOAA’s total for each event, wherever people died, its tsunami and fires included. A tsunami counts the dead its runup records give for this place: NOAA’s total for a tsunami includes its source quake’s.
• A tsunami from elsewhere counts where one of its runups killed or rose a metre or more.
• Counted to October 19, 2026, as is the map. The last 30 days ask USGS again.

How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Earthquakes, live, The world through history