A Kona earthquake measured magnitude-4.6 on June 2 northwest of Keauhou, at a depth of 21 miles (24 km). Island of Hawaiʻi residents may have felt the shaking from that event and from other recent deep quakes.
The June 2 quake fits a pattern the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has tracked since 1912. A magnitude-6.0 event on May 22 struck beneath the west side of the Island of Hawaiʻi, southeast of Captain Cook, at a depth of 14 miles (23 km) below the ocean surface, and a magnitude-4.7 quake on June 9 was recorded east of Pepeʻekeo at a depth of 24 miles (39 km).
Deep Quakes Across the Island of Hawaiʻi
Those three earthquakes place the strongest recent shaking in a band that runs beneath and around the Island of Hawaiʻi rather than at the surface. The June 2 quake was smaller than the May 22 event but still deep enough to be felt widely, and its location northwest of Keauhou puts it in the offshore zone where these earthquakes have been recorded for years.
Residents who felt more than one of these events were not reacting to isolated jolts. The sequence shows how large, deep earthquakes can arrive from different parts of the Island of Hawaiʻi in the same short period, with each one carrying a different magnitude, depth, and location but the same broad offshore setting.
USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Since 1912
Deep earthquakes like these have been recorded since the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory first started monitoring Hawaii’s volcanoes in 1912. Hawaiʻi sits in the middle of the Pacific plate, so its seismicity does not come from plate-boundary interactions; instead, volcanism in Hawaii comes from a mantle plume that formed the Hawaiian Island Chain as the Pacific plate moved northwest.
The island load is heaviest beneath Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and the lithosphere responds by sagging downward toward the center of the Earth. About 100 miles offshore of Hawaii, the lithosphere flexes upward in the Hawaiian Arch, and the article’s blanket-fold image is meant to show the deep faulting produced by that flexure.
Hawaiian Arch Faulting
That flexure helps explain why deep earthquakes can be felt even when they are not directly related to magmatic processes. For readers on the Island of Hawaiʻi, the practical takeaway is straightforward: the June 2 Kona earthquake was one of several recent deep events, and the pattern points to plate flexure offshore rather than activity tied directly to magma.
What specifically triggered the June 2 magnitude-4.6 Kona earthquake northwest of Keauhou is not explained in the available facts, but the broader setting is clear enough to read the next shaking when it comes. The June 2 event belongs to a deep-earthquake sequence that has already included May 22 and June 9, and that makes the offshore pattern the part to watch.
