Mazatlán Earthquakes Today: Live Map & Rivera Plate Risk

Mazatlán, a major Pacific port city in the state of Sinaloa, sits at the northern edge of Mexico's most seismically active coastline. Offshore, the Rivera plate — a small tectonic plate wedged between the larger Pacific and Cocos plates — subducts beneath the North American plate along the Middle America Trench, generating moderate earthquake hazard for the city and the wider region.

This subduction zone produced Mexico's strongest earthquake of the 20th century: the magnitude 8.2 Jalisco earthquake of 3 June 1932, followed weeks later by a magnitude 7.8 aftershock, both centred south of Mazatlán and felt strongly along the Sinaloa and Jalisco coast. USGS records show Mazatlán has logged dozens of magnitude 3+ earthquakes within 100 km since 1900, with a magnitude 5 or larger striking roughly once every 25 to 30 years on average.

Compared with Oaxaca or Guerrero further south, Mazatlán's earthquake hazard is moderate rather than extreme — the city sits closer to the northern tip of the Rivera plate's subduction, where convergence rates are lower. Mexico's National Seismological Service (SSN) monitors the region continuously, and local building codes account for the moderate but real risk of a large offshore rupture.