Swarm of quakes hits Rotorua

A swarm of earthquakes hit Rotorua.

Geonet has reported that the eathquakes hit about 5pm last night near Lake Rotoma.

By 8pm the quakes were semi-continuous with the largest event of magnitude 3.5 occurring at 8:30pm, before the activity tailed off.

The earthquake epicentres were clustered near Lake Rotoma to the north-west of Rotorua.

Geonet reported that swarms of small shallow earthquakes were reasonably common in the Taupo Volcanic Zone, which isbetween Ruapehu and White Island.

Swarms differ from typical tectonic earthquakes as there is no clear mainshock/aftershock sequence.

Often many of the larger events in the sequence will also be about the same magnitude. In last night's sequence 11 of the events were between magnitude 2.4 and 2.8