Earthquake Alert Display: Quakes Near You, at Home
An earthquake alert display is a screen at home that tells you about quakes near you without opening an app. GridTicker's Earthquakes feed does this in a browser on a spare monitor, a laptop or a TV. It lists quakes of magnitude 2.5 and up from the last day within about 185 miles of the places you set, plus any quake the US Geological Survey calls significant anywhere in the world. Each card shows a map with the epicenter and, for a big enough quake, the USGS ShakeMap of how hard the ground shook. When the US tsunami warning centers put out a message about a quake, the card tells you what they said.
This is a record of quakes that have already happened in the last day. It is meant to answer the question you have after a rumble or a news alert: was that close, how big was it, and is there a tsunami concern?
What counts as "near you"
Distance and magnitude
The feed draws a circle of about 185 miles around each of your places. Inside it, any quake of magnitude 2.5 or more from the last day can appear, and the feed shows the three most significant. That cutoff matters in places that get a lot of small quakes. You see the ones worth knowing about, not a long list of tremors nobody felt.
Distances are given in the units you choose for weather: pick °F and you get miles, pick °C and you get kilometers.
Up to four places
The places are the same ones you set for weather, and you can have up to four. Type a ZIP code or an airport code, use your browser's location, or drop a pin on a map. Four places lets the feed watch more than your own house:
- Home
- A parent's house in another state
- A child's college town
- A cabin or vacation spot
Because the places come from the US National Weather Service setup, they have to be inside the United States.
With no place set
Without a place, the feed shows only the quakes the USGS calls significant, anywhere. That is still worth having, since a significant quake anywhere is news. But the nearby list needs at least one place.
The tsunami line on the card
For a coastal household, the first question after a large offshore quake is whether a tsunami is possible. The US tsunami warning centers, in Palmer, Alaska and in Honolulu, issue messages about quakes that might cause one. When they do, the earthquake card says what the message says. That can be:
- No tsunami threat.
- A tsunami watch, advisory or warning, and the coasts it covers.
- The wave heights they forecast for another country.
- That the threat is over.
The National Weather Service ranks these levels in this order:
- Watch - a distant earthquake has happened and a tsunami is possible. Stay alert for updates.
- Advisory - strong currents or waves that are dangerous to people in or very near the water are expected.
- Warning - a dangerous tsunami is possible or expected, and people should move away from the coast.
An advisory ranks above a watch, which can seem backward. The weather alert setting accounts for this: a tsunami advisory shows anywhere watches are shown.
When a message is about distant coasts
A quake with a tsunami alert or forecast shows on the card wherever you are, whether or not you have a place set. A large quake in the Pacific with a message about distant coasts will reach your screen even if you live a thousand miles inland. That is often how people first hear about one.
When the warning is for your own place
A tsunami warning for one of your own places also arrives as a weather alert. If you have turned on full-screen alerts, it takes over the whole screen until it is over. The earthquake card gives the context, and the weather alert makes sure you can't miss the warning.
Reading the map
Every earthquake card carries a map.
- The epicenter is the point on the surface above where the quake started. It is marked on every quake's map.
- The ShakeMap rings appear once the USGS has mapped a quake's shaking, which it does for quakes big enough to matter. They show how strongly the quake was felt in different places, in the ShakeMap's own colors. Magnitude is one number for the whole quake. The ShakeMap shows what that number meant at your end, which also depends on distance and the ground under you.
- A white cross marks your place when it falls inside the map. It is the quickest way to see where you were compared with the epicenter and the rings.
Put together, the card answers in one glance what normally takes a few searches: how big, how far, and how hard it shook where you are.
Putting it on a screen at home
GridTicker runs in any modern browser on Windows, macOS, Linux or a Raspberry Pi, and there is nothing to install. It works as a bar across the top of a monitor, on a TV in the corner, or on a spare laptop you leave running. Your settings follow your account, so every screen you sign in on works the same way.
Earthquakes is a feed under Weather on the News & Weather page, and you turn it on for each screen separately. The same section has two related feeds. Hurricanes & typhoons covers storms, and Wildfires covers US fires of 100 acres or more still burning near your places. You can also add the forecast and weather alerts, or leave the earthquake card as the only weather item on a screen.
If the screen is in a shared room, you can schedule the ticker by the hour and the day, such as evenings only or weekdays only.
How GridTicker helps with this
- Earthquakes feed: nearby quakes from the last day, significant quakes worldwide, and the tsunami centers' messages. See Hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires.
- Weather locations: the up to four places that "near you" is measured from. See Weather locations.
- Weather alerts: how much the Weather Service sends you, and whether a dangerous warning takes over the screen. See Weather alerts.
- Where each ticker appears: choose which screens show it. See Where each ticker appears.
To put an earthquake card on a spare screen at home, set up a strip at https://app.gridticker.com/signup.