Data story · Weather
The cities most often hit by earthquakes and tropical cyclones.
Count every strong earthquake and every tropical storm that came near a city, year by year, and the busiest strips all sit on the Pacific Rim. One great earthquake can outweigh a decade of hurricanes.
Every strip on this page is a real Weather strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Weather.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one city, with one band per year from 2001 on the left to 2025 on the right. A band is coloured by how many events came near the city that year, from Quiet year through Some events to Struck often. The scale is logarithmic, so the step from none to a few is as visible as the step from ten to a hundred.
What counts as an event
“Natural disasters” is a big phrase, and this measure answers a narrower question. It counts two things:
- Earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or more with an epicentre within 250 km of the city, from the US Geological Survey. Each quake counts once, aftershocks included.
- Tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms) whose track passed within 200 km of the city at tropical-storm strength or more, from NOAA’s IBTrACS archive. Each storm counts once, however long it lingered.
Floods, wildfires, tornadoes, volcanoes and droughts are not counted, and an event is something that happened near the city, not damage done to it. A city appears only if it recorded at least 12 events in at least 8 of the 25 years, which leaves 58 of the 193 cities in Huezle.
Tokyo: one year in the middle of the strip
- Quiet year
- Some events
- Struck often
Tokyo had at least one event in every year, and a typical year holds about a dozen. Then comes 2011, the year of the Tohoku earthquake and its long aftershock sequence, with 268 events: 40% of Tokyo’s 669 across the whole 25 years. Because every aftershock counts, one great earthquake can fill a strip in a way no storm can.
Dark from end to end
- Davao · 696 events
- Santiago · 428 events
- Quiet year
- Some events
- Struck often
Davao, on the Philippine island of Mindanao, has the most events of any city, 696, and never had a year with fewer than five. Its strip is dark all the way across. Santiago’s is dominated by one year instead: 2010, the year of the Maule earthquake, holds 157 of its 428 events. Tokyo, Taipei and Padang fill out the top five, and every city in the top ten sits on the ring of plate boundaries around the Pacific or along the Sunda arc of Indonesia.
One dark band
- Quiet year
- Some events
- Struck often
Some strips are almost empty apart from one band. Kathmandu’s is 2015, the year of the Gorkha earthquake: one main shock and the aftershocks that followed it. Strips like this are the easiest to date and the hardest to place, because many quiet cities have one year like it.
Hurricane cities look quiet
- Quiet year
- Some events
- Struck often
Cities known for storms rather than earthquakes look much quieter, and that is the counting rule at work: a hurricane counts once, while a big earthquake brings dozens of aftershocks with it. Miami had 17 events in 25 years, New Orleans 24, and Hong Kong, which sees few earthquakes, 43. Compare these strips with each other, not with Tokyo’s.
Where the numbers come from. Earthquakes are from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program and storm tracks from NOAA’s International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS). Both are public-domain US-government data. Distances run from the city’s coordinates to each quake’s epicentre and to each point on a storm’s track.
The same cities are ranked for wind, heat and cold, and for how fast they are warming. All five measures are in the Weather category.
In Huezle one of these strips comes with four cities to choose from. Could you name a city from the year its strip goes dark?
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhoneQuestions
Which city has the most earthquakes?
Of the 58 cities in Huezle’s disasters measure, Davao in the Philippines had the most events from 2001 to 2025, 696, followed by Tokyo with 669. The count combines magnitude 5.0+ earthquakes within 250 km and tropical cyclones within 200 km.
Why does Miami look so quiet?
Each tropical cyclone counts once, however long it lasts, while every earthquake aftershock counts on its own. A hurricane city therefore collects far fewer events than a city near a fault, even in a busy storm season.
Does this include floods, wildfires or tornadoes?
No. Only earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or more and tropical cyclones of tropical-storm strength or more are counted. A city with frequent floods or fires can look quiet here.
More guides
- The windiest cities in the world.The windiest of 193 cities are all in the Southern Hemisphere, the calmest all in the rainforest. Everyday wind, 2001 to 2025, as strips of colour.
- The hottest cities in the world, year by year.Which cities have the hottest days, and which are hottest all year round? 193 cities, 25 years of NASA data, drawn as strips of colour.
- Which cities are warming fastest?The 25-year temperature trend for 193 cities, from NASA data. Central Europe warmed fastest, the tropics slowest, and a few cities went the other way.
- The coldest cities in the world, year by year.Yakutsk drops below −50 °C every winter. The coldest nights in 193 cities, 2001 to 2025, drawn as strips of colour from NASA data.
Now try naming one yourself.
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