March 2, 1956 Tsunami: Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand
A tsunami caused by a magnitude 5.3 earthquake began at Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand on March 2, 1956 at 22:43 UTC. The water rose as high as 0.9 meters.
Where the waves reached
The source of the tsunami. No runup with a place is recorded for it.
- Under 1 m
- 1 to 3 m
- 3 to 10 m
- 10 to 30 m
- 30 m and more
- Height not recorded
The tsunami
- Date
- March 2, 1956, 22:43 UTC
- Source
- Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand
- Cause
- Earthquake
- Earthquake
- Magnitude 5.3
- Maximum water height
- 0.9 m (3.0 ft)
- Runups recorded
- 0
- Waters
- A lake or river, not the ocean
- How certain
- Probable tsunami
- Source location
- 38.900° S, 175.800° E
The toll
The record gives no deaths, injuries or damage for this tsunami.
What the record says
NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.
A wave 0.9 m high was reported at the delta of the Tongariro River. No new displacements of any of the many known faults in the area were detected. (Extracted and abridged from the Atlas of Isoseismal Maps of New Zealand Earthquakes 2nd edition (Downes & Dowrick, 2009), which lists key references relevant to this event (reference #5324)
More
Every tsunami in 1956The 1900sTsunamis of New ZealandThe earthquakeThis day in weather historyAlerts in force
Sources
Tsunami events and runups from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-09-24. NCEI tsunami event 5540.