Earthquakes near Mengzi through history

It was also the deadliest: NOAA records 15,621 deaths for it. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 11 here, back to 1539. NOAA records deaths in 6 of the events here, 20,592 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 4.5 on August 13, 2005 (Yunnan Province: Wenshan). NOAA’s record here begins on August 8, 1539 with an earthquake (Yunnan Province: Jiangshui). It grows thinner going back: 5 of the 11 significant earthquakes NOAA lists here are from 1927 on.

• August 13, 2005Earthquake · M 4.5Yunnan Province: WenshanNOAA NCEI
• January 4, 1970Earthquake · M 7.122 km SSW of Yuxi, China · 15,621 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• December 16, 1887Earthquake · M 6.8 (est.)Yunnan Province · 2,000 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI
• August 8, 1539Earthquake · M 5.5 (est.)Yunnan Province: JiangshuiNOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Mengzi 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