A rare large quake high in the Atlas Mountains, in villages of stone and earth never built to shake. It came late at night, when everyone was home.
Rumble is a beautifully dark, free earthquake tracker for iPhone — live USGS data and quiet alerts when it matters near you.
DownloadThe 2023 Al Haouz earthquake struck on September 8, 2023, registering magnitude 6.8 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 16× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 31.06°N, 8.38°W, at a depth of about 19 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 2,946 people were killed.