Afghanistan — Natural Disaster Report
Asia · Live status: High (1 active event)
Current situation: 1 natural disaster event is currently monitored in Afghanistan, with a worst severity of Severe. Details, sources and timestamps are listed below.
Afghanistan combines high seismic hazard with limited resilience. The Hindu Kush range hosts a zone of deep and intermediate-depth earthquakes felt across the region, and shallow earthquakes in the north and east have repeatedly destroyed villages built largely of mud brick — including the 2023 Herat earthquakes and the 2022 Paktika earthquake. Mountain terrain and deforestation make landslides and avalanches frequent, and spring snowmelt combined with rainfall produces flash floods in narrow valleys. Recurrent multi-year droughts have severely damaged agriculture and driven displacement, and decades of conflict have weakened the infrastructure and institutions that would normally reduce disaster impact.
Live map — Afghanistan
Loading live data… · Marker positions are approximate; severity is labelled in each popup. Sources: USGS, GDACS, NASA EONET, NOAA/NWS, EMSC.
Active alerts & recent events
Latest earthquakes
Near a particular city? Earthquake history near a place · disasters reported near a place · compare Afghanistan's earthquake record with another country.
By hazard in Afghanistan
Each of these has its own page: recent activity, the season it happens in, past events and what to do.
Risk profile
Earthquakes year-round, concentrated in the Hindu Kush and the northeast. Flash floods and snowmelt flooding March-May. Avalanches in mountain passes, winter and early spring. Drought as a recurring multi-year condition. Extreme cold in highland winters.
Official emergency authorities
Disaster displacement in Afghanistan
252,815 internal displacements
Largest single event: 252,815 from mixed disasters, beginning 1 January 2025.
A displacement is a movement, not a person: somebody forced from home more than once in a year is counted more than once. These are movements caused by disasters only — displacement caused by conflict is counted separately and is not included here.
| Hazard | Displacements in 2025 |
|---|---|
| Mixed disasters | 252,815 |
| Year | Displacements |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 252,815 |
| 2024 | 1,016,707 |
Source: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Global Internal Displacement Database. IDMC publishes annually, so the latest year here is the latest they have finalised — not the current one.
What this site sees in Afghanistan
| Source | Events here, last 12 months | What it will not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre | 20 | Global for earthquakes, with the best coverage in Europe and the Mediterranean. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| US Geological Survey | 18 | Global for earthquakes above roughly M4.5, and denser where there are more seismometers. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| ReliefWeb (UN OCHA) | 2 | Global, but it reports on humanitarian RESPONSE. It arrives days after an event rather than during it, and never functions as a warning. |
| GDACS (European Commission / United Nations) | none | Global, but deliberately selective: it alerts on disasters likely to need INTERNATIONAL response. Serious local flooding that a national agency handles alone will not appear here. |
| NASA FIRMS | none | Global, but it sees only what the satellite saw on its pass, and thick cloud hides fire. A quiet day here is not evidence that nothing burned. |
| NASA EONET | none | Global and curated rather than automatic, so it is slower than the raw feeds and carries far fewer events. |
| WMO Alert Hub (national weather services) | none | Each warning comes from one country own alerting authority, so the scale is that agency scale and is not comparable between countries. Many agencies publish no coordinates, and those warnings are placed at the centre of the country rather than where the weather is - the area name is the real answer. |
| MeteoAlarm (EUMETNET) | none | Europe only. It publishes no coordinates at all, so every warning here is placed at the centre of its country and the area name is the only reliable indication of where it applies. |
| NOAA Tsunami Warning Centers | none | These two centres warn for the US and Canadian coasts and for the Pacific and Caribbean basins. The Indian Ocean and Mediterranean have their own warning centres, which are not read here. Their routine information statements - the ones that say there is NO tsunami danger - are deliberately not imported, so an empty tsunami list means no threat was issued, not that nothing was checked. |
| NOAA National Hurricane Center | none | The Atlantic and the eastern and central Pacific only. No typhoon in the western Pacific and no cyclone in the Indian Ocean or the southern hemisphere appears here; those come from GDACS and from national services. |
Not applicable here: US National Weather Service — Covers the United States only. It publishes nothing about any other country, so its absence from a country page is not an outage. ; USGS Volcano Hazards Program — United States volcanoes only - Alaska, Hawaii, the Cascades, Yellowstone, California and the Northern Mariana Islands. It says nothing about Indonesia, Iceland, Italy or anywhere else, so its silence about a foreign eruption is not a judgement about that eruption.
Frequently asked questions
What natural disasters are currently active in Afghanistan?
There are currently 1 monitored natural disaster events in Afghanistan. The overall risk status is High. See the live list on this page for details and sources.
What natural hazards does Afghanistan face?
Afghanistan combines high seismic hazard with limited resilience. The Hindu Kush range hosts a zone of deep and intermediate-depth earthquakes felt across the region, and shallow earthquakes in the north and east have repeatedly destroyed villages built largely of mud brick — including the 2023 Herat earthquakes and the 2022 Paktika earthquake.
When is the main natural disaster season in Afghanistan?
Earthquakes year-round, concentrated in the Hindu Kush and the northeast. Flash floods and snowmelt flooding March-May. Avalanches in mountain passes, winter and early spring. Drought as a recurring multi-year condition. Extreme cold in highland winters. Seasons shift from year to year; treat these as the usual pattern, not a forecast.
Which official agency issues disaster warnings in Afghanistan?
Official warnings for Afghanistan are issued by National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA). The link is on this page. This site aggregates and reports; it does not issue warnings, and in an emergency the national agency is the authority.
Where does this disaster data for Afghanistan come from?
Data is aggregated from official sources including USGS, GDACS (EC/UN), NASA EONET, ReliefWeb and national agencies. Every event links to its original source, and update times are shown on each record.
Data sources: USGS, GDACS (EC/UN), NASA EONET, NOAA/NWS, EMSC, ReliefWeb (UN OCHA). See data sources & attribution and methodology. This page does not replace official emergency guidance.