Texas Earthquakes: Recent Quakes and the Largest on Record
Texas averages 393 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more a year (2016 to 2025), and the largest in the USGS catalog since 1900 is the M6.3 of August 16, 1931, the Valentine, Texas Earthquake.
Earthquakes near Houston in the last 30 days
Every quake within 155 miles of Houston, Texas’s largest city, newest first. For your own address, enter a ZIP code.
Live from the USGS earthquake catalog. Times are Central time; felt reports and the shaking level come from Did You Feel It? A new quake can take a few minutes to appear and its magnitude can be revised.
Texas by the numbers
USGS catalog, read October 10, 2026Texas averages 393 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more a year, counting 3,925 from 2016 to 2025, which ranks it 5th of the fifty states.
Texas earthquakes by year
The USGS catalog lists 1,246 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or more in Texas from 1990 to 2025, the most in 2022 (223). 2016 to 2025: 1,117; 2006 to 2015: 100.
The 10 largest earthquakes in Texas
The largest earthquake in Texas in the USGS catalog since 1900 is the M6.3 of August 16, 1931, the Valentine, Texas Earthquake. The most recent of magnitude 4 or more was the M5.0 of July 23, 2026, 38 km SSE of Spearman, Texas.
- 1M6.3
- 2M5.7
- 3M5.4
- 4M5.4
- 5M5.2
- 6M5.2
- 7M5.1
- 8M5.1
- 9M5.0
- 10M5.0
From the USGS ComCat catalog, every magnitude since 1900, read October 10, 2026. Each place links to the quake’s USGS page.
What to do in an earthquake
- 1
Drop
Drop where you are onto hands and knees.
- 2
Cover
Cover your head and neck with one arm and hand. If a sturdy table or desk is nearby, crawl underneath it for shelter. If no shelter is nearby, crawl next to an interior wall (away from windows). Stay on your knees; bend over to protect vital organs.
- 3
Hold On
Hold until the shaking stops. If under shelter, hold on with one hand and be ready to move with it when the shelter moves. If not under shelter, hold on to your head and neck with both arms and hands.
Ready.gov’s words, from Ready.gov: Earthquakes (updated Sep 9, 2026, read October 9, 2026). Practice it with The Great ShakeOut: Earthquake Drills.

Texas earthquake questions
More from MyWild
Sources. The live list: the USGS FDSN event service. Texas’s counts and largest quakes: the USGS ComCat catalog, read October 10, 2026, counted inside the state’s Census boundary and within 150 km of its coast where USGS names the state. Houston: the state’s most populous city in the Census Vintage 2024 estimates. Older years hold fewer small quakes because fewer instruments were listening.
Hero photograph: the San Andreas Fault across the Carrizo Plain. “Kluft-photo-Carrizo-Plain-Nov-2007-Img 0327” by Ikluft, CC BY-SA 4.0