Sri Lanka — Natural Disaster Report
Asia · Live status: High (1 active event)
Current situation: 1 natural disaster event is currently monitored in Sri Lanka, with a worst severity of Severe. Details, sources and timestamps are listed below.
Sri Lanka's hazard profile is dominated by monsoon rainfall, which arrives twice a year from different directions and produces flooding and landslides in the central highlands and the southwest. The steep, densely settled hill country is especially prone to landslides after prolonged rain. The island was severely affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which struck the eastern and southern coasts with almost no warning and killed more than 35,000 people, the second-highest national toll after Indonesia. Drought affects the dry zone in the north and east when the monsoon fails, and cyclones occasionally track close enough to bring damaging wind and rain.
Live map — Sri Lanka
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
No events match these filters right now. Data syncs run continuously — check the live map or widen the filters.
Near a particular city? Earthquake history near a place · disasters reported near a place · compare Sri Lanka's earthquake record with another country.
By hazard in Sri Lanka
Each of these has its own page: recent activity, the season it happens in, past events and what to do.
Risk profile
Southwest monsoon May-September brings flooding and landslides to the southwest and hill country. Northeast monsoon December-February affects the north and east. Drought in the dry zone during weak monsoon years. Tsunami risk from Sunda Trench earthquakes.
Official emergency authorities
Disaster displacement in Sri Lanka
563,856 internal displacements
Largest single event: 560,263 from storm, beginning 27 November 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 |
|---|---|
| Storm | 560,511 |
| Flood | 3,113 |
| Mass Movement | 189 |
| Erosion | 43 |
| Year | Displacements |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 563,856 |
| 2024 | 83,504 |
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 Sri Lanka
| Source | Events here, last 12 months | What it will not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| NASA FIRMS | 36 | 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. |
| GDACS (European Commission / United Nations) | 1 | 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. |
| ReliefWeb (UN OCHA) | 1 | Global, but it reports on humanitarian RESPONSE. It arrives days after an event rather than during it, and never functions as a warning. |
| US Geological Survey | none | Global for earthquakes above roughly M4.5, and denser where there are more seismometers. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre | none | Global for earthquakes, with the best coverage in Europe and the Mediterranean. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| 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 Sri Lanka?
There are currently 1 monitored natural disaster events in Sri Lanka. The overall risk status is High. See the live list on this page for details and sources.
What natural hazards does Sri Lanka face?
Sri Lanka's hazard profile is dominated by monsoon rainfall, which arrives twice a year from different directions and produces flooding and landslides in the central highlands and the southwest. The steep, densely settled hill country is especially prone to landslides after prolonged rain.
When is the main natural disaster season in Sri Lanka?
Southwest monsoon May-September brings flooding and landslides to the southwest and hill country. Northeast monsoon December-February affects the north and east. Drought in the dry zone during weak monsoon years. Tsunami risk from Sunda Trench earthquakes. Seasons shift from year to year; treat these as the usual pattern, not a forecast.
Which official agency issues disaster warnings in Sri Lanka?
Official warnings for Sri Lanka are issued by Department of Meteorology, Sri Lanka. 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 Sri Lanka 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.