I know large earthquakes are effectively random (ignoring aftershocks) but this feels like a lot this year, yeah?

Yeah, I looked this up and USGS literally has a page about this.

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/why-are-we-having-so-many-or-so-fe...

According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 16 major earthquakes in any given year. That includes 15 earthquakes in the magnitude 7 range and one earthquake magnitude 8.0 or greater. In the past 40-50 years, our records show that we have exceeded the long-term average number of major earthquakes about a dozen times.

You can see a map of ALL the 7+ here:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=-89.0318...

The search filtering is a bit hard to find in the UI but the parameters in the URL can be modified. (We had 16+ 7.0 last year as a comparison)

Yea, feel like a lot of big ones this year, but looking it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_2026 it is actually not necessarily worse than previous years.

Earthquakes can occur in swarms[1] (distinct from aftershocks), with many of a similar size (i.e. Not a big quake followed by smaller ones) occurring in a small area over "relatively short" periods of time (i.e. days, weeks, or years).

The USGS map shows the 7.7 quake being followed by about 19 other smaller quakes near or in Indonesia within just a few hours. These are probably aftershocks.

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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_swarm

It does feel like a lot

76 quakes ranking 7.0+ so far this decade, including 10 this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_2021%E2%80...

HN highlighting a lot this year, is all

I was wondering the same: https://www.morageology.com/earthquake_year.php