Light earthquake, 4.2 mag was detected near Castlepoint in New Zealand

A light earthquake magnitude 4.2 (ml/mb) has occurred on Wednesday, 42 kilometers (26 miles) from Castlepoint in New Zealand. Exact location of event, longitude 176.5624 East, latitude -40.6255 South, depth = 20.449 km. The temblor was detected at 23:17:41 / 11:17 pm (local time epicenter). Global date and time of event UTC/GMT: 03/12/25 / 2025-12-03 23:17:41 / December 3, 2025 @ 11:17 pm. A tsunami warning has not been issued (Does not indicate if a tsunami actually did or will exist). Event id: us7000rff4. Ids that are associated to the earthquake: us7000rff4. The epicenter was at a depth of 20.449 km (13 miles).

The epicenter was 86 km (53 miles) from Palmerston North (c. 76 000 pop), 85 km (53 miles) from Masterton (c. 20 700 pop). Nearby country/countries, New Zealand (c. 4 252 000 pop) (That might be effected). Nearest cities/city/towns to hypocenter/epicentrum was Palmerston North, Masterton (min 5000 pop).

Earthquakes 4.0 to 5.0 are often felt, but only causes minor damage. In the past 24 hours, there have been two, in the last 10 days two, in the past 30 days two and in the last 365 days five earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater that have been detected in the same area. Each year there are an estimated 13,000 light quakes in the world.

Questions or comments?

Did objects rattle, topple over, or fall off shelves? Leave a comment or report about activity, shaking and damage at your home, country and city. The information in this article comes from the USGS Earthquake Notification Service. Read more about the earthquake, Seismometer information, Distances, Parameters, Date-Time, Location and details about this quake, detected near: 42 km NE of Castlepoint, New Zealand.

More information

Parameter	Value	Description
Magnitude	4.2 mb	The magnitude for the event.
Longitude	176.5624° East	Decimal degrees longitude. Negative values for western longitudes.
Latitude	-40.6255° South	Decimal degrees latitude. Negative values for southern latitudes.
Depth	20.449 km	Depth of the event in kilometers.
Place	42 km NE of Castlepoint, New Zealand	Textual description of named geographic region near to the event. This may be a city name, or a Flinn-Engdahl Region name.
Time	2025-12-03 23:17:41	Time when the event occurred. UTC/GMT
Updated	2025-12-03 23:29:45	Time when the event was most recently updated. UTC/GMT
Timezone offset		Timezone offset from UTC in minutes at the event epicenter.
Felt		The total number of felt reports
CDI		The maximum reported intensity for the event.
MMI		The maximum estimated instrumental intensity for the event.
Alert Level		The alert level from the PAGER earthquake impact scale. Green, Yellow, Orange or Red.
Review Status	reviewed	Indicates whether the event has been reviewed by a human.
Tsunami	0	This flag is set to "1" for large events in oceanic regions and "0" otherwise. The existence or value of this flag does not indicate if a tsunami actually did or will exist.
SIG	271	A number describing how significant the event is. Larger numbers indicate a more significant event.
Network	us	The ID of a data contributor. Identifies the network considered to be the preferred source of information for this event.
Sources	,us,	A comma-separated list of network contributors.
Number of Stations Used	27	The total number of Number of seismic stations which reported P- and S-arrival times for this earthquake.
Horizontal Distance	0.246	Horizontal distance from the epicenter to the nearest station (in degrees).
Root Mean Square	1.09 sec	The root-mean-square (RMS) travel time residual, in sec, using all weights.
Azimuthal Gap	173	The largest azimuthal gap between azimuthally adjacent stations (in degrees).
Magnitude Type	mwr	The method or algorithm used to calculate the preferred magnitude for the event.
Event Type	earthquake	Type of seismic event.
Event ID	us7000rff4	Id of event.
Event Code	7000rff4	An identifying code assigned by, and unique from, the corresponding source for the event.
Event IDS	,us7000rff4,	A comma-separated list of event ids that are associated to an event.

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Light earthquake, 4.2 mag was detected near Castlepoint in New Zealand

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