Magnitude 8.3 Mw | Depth 609 km Max. intensity V (Moderate) | |
 | ||
Date 24 May 2013 (2013-05-24) | ||
The 2013 Okhotsk Sea earthquake occurred with a moment magnitude of 8.3 at 15:44:49 local time (05:44:49 UTC) on 24 May. It had an epicenter in the Sea of Okhotsk and affected primarily (but not only) Asian Russia, especially the Kamchatka Peninsula where the shaking lasted for five minutes. Due to its great depth (609 km), it was not particularly intense at the surface, but was felt over a very large area. Such a deep-focus earthquake could be felt not only in areas surrounding the Okhotsk Sea but also in places as far as Tokyo (JMA 1) (about 2,374 km away), Nanjing (more than 4,000 km away), Atyrau (MM V) (about 7,196 km away), and Moscow (about 7,370 km away). The shaking prompted almost 900 residents to leave their homes in Moscow.
A related aftershock with a magnitude Mw 6.7 produced a supershear earthquake. It was an extremely deep (640 kilometers (400 miles)) supershear as well as unusually fast at "eight kilometers per second (five miles per second), nearly 50 percent faster than the shear wave velocity at that depth."