Between Spitak and Vanadzor
11 km south-west of Vanadzor and 13 km south-east of Spitak, Lori province
- Date25 October 2026
- Time01:07 local · 21:07:09 UTC (24 Oct)
- Depth≈11 km
- Accuracy±0.25 km
Located by the CHARNET network, IGES
At seven minutes past one in the morning on 25 October, while Vanadzor slept, the ground beneath it moved. A magnitude 1.4 earthquake at a depth of about 11 kilometres: nobody felt it, no cup rattled on a shelf. But within seconds, our stations had already “heard” it.
How do you find an earthquake that nobody noticed? Watch the records: the same small shock reaches the stations one after another, and the further the station, the longer the gap between the two waves.
Vertical component, 1–15 Hz, 50 seconds of record (21:07:03–21:07:53 UTC), shown 2× faster. Blue — the P-wave, gold — the S-wave. Arrival times and parameters: CHARNET bulletin (HYPO81).
- 3.1 sGyulagarak, 22 km: the S-wave arrives 3.1 seconds after the P-wave
- 6.0 sByurakan, 46 km: the gap has doubled
- 8.5 sDeghdzavan, 71 km: the gap keeps growing with distance
- ×8Rule of thumb: the gap in seconds times about 8 gives the distance in kilometres. Each station draws a circle around itself; the circles meet at one point between Spitak and Vanadzor
CHARNET bulletin: 40.756° N, 44.380° E, ML 1.4, depth 11.3 km, 4 stations, 8 phases, epicentre accuracy 0.25 km · Records: CHARNET, IGES
Earthquakes this small happen in Armenia almost every day. They do no harm, but each one is a point on the map of active faults. Hundreds of such points, collected year after year, show where the crust is under stress — and that is what seismic hazard maps are built from.