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5 phone apps to track O.C. earthquakes
November 29th, 2009, 1:26 pm · 11 Comments · posted by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
Southern Californians (well, most of us) are obsessed with earthquakes, an interest well understood by the people who develop apps for the iPhone. There’s now more than a half-dozen quake apps, most which cost 99-cents. They all draw from the U.S. Geological Survey and other scientific organizations. But some apps are better than others at presenting information. Here’s a snapshot of the the better known apps.
QUAKEWATCH: This is the app I’ll keep. I quickly check quake activity throughout the day, and QuakeWatch has a nifty task bar that divides seismic activity into three categories: Latest, Biggest and Closest. That last function is especially important; it tells me how many miles from designated spot a quake has occurred. It is useful when I need to know how many miles offshore a quake has occurred from, say, Huntington Beach or Santa Ana. QuakeWatch also displays the quakes by magnitude, general location and time. You click on an arrow to call up a detailed report from USGS. You can email the data wherever you want. And there’s a separate feature that lists tsunami advisories. There’s also a map that shows where quakes have been occurring around the world, but it’s a bit over-designed.
I FELT THAT: This app is a close second to QuakeWatch. The magnitude, location and time feature is easier to read (thanks to color coding) and there’s a nice task bar featuring the following categories: Nearby (quakes), World, Calif-Nev., San Francisco and More … That last option lets you chose other regions, such as Los Angeles. But it also features regions like the northeastern U.S., where significant quakes rarely happen. It looks like a pointless add-on. The quake maps are good and let you set the range of seismicity you want to follow.
EPICENTER: Great name, mediocre app. It sometimes takes too long to update quake data. The basic magnitude, location and time list is clear and links easily to more detailed information. The world map is about the same as others. But the app doesn’t offer much beyond this.
SHAKE PRO: I downloaded version 1.0, which has some presentation problems. The main screen lists the magnitude and time of the late quakes. But there’s a symbol of the globe next to each entry that’s supposed to give you a better sense of where in the world a quake has occurred. But it’s too small to be useful if you’re dashing through the list. And the navigation to the quake maps is clumsy.
SEISMIC-XML: This app is very basic, listing the magnitude and location of quakes. But the time feature is too hard to read, a shortcoming that should have been corrected before the product was offered to the public.
One more thing …
There’s also an app called iSeismo that turns your iPhone into a very basic seismometer. (iPhones have accelerometers.) It serves as a seismograph, with the etch-y needle constantly scrolling across the screen. The needle goes up and down when the phone is jiggled, presumably by a quake. But it moves if you simply touch the phone or area around it. However, if you have iSeismo going when a real quake occurs, it will capture the event, and you can easily go back to capture the ups-and-downs of the ground motion, in a basic way. It’s not sophisticated, but I like it and will keep in on my phone.
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3.1 earthquake near Loma Linda jiggles parts of O.C.
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Another waste of money. and we wonder why we’re broke
Do you use any of these apps? Which ones do you like?
I wouldn’t say that most S Californians are obsessed with quakes. In fact I think the opposite is the case. I read about a 3. something quake recently that made it onto the Fox news website and my thought was, why is this news? I didn’t even feel it.
Now stronger quakes that I feel, that is something different and it might be nice to know some of this info if it wasn’t all cluttered up with minor quakes that happen a lot.
I don’t really consider it much news unless it is over 4 or more so that it shakes strongly. Then I want to know if it was close and so was a minor one or further away and maybe a major one.
Are there aps for other phones like Windows mobile? I’ve just purchased one (co decided which operating system we need for our apps).
to many can see it is over
You should definitely check the “Epicentral” app. Works great for world earthquakes:
http://eqseis.geosc.psu.edu/~cammon/Tools/iEpicentral.html
Well, you’re not going to NEED your Iphone to tell you if a big quake has just occured though the feature that tells you if one occured offshore might be very useful because not every tsunami is preceded by water pulling back from the shore. The wave can come in first or so I have been led to believe. Still it takes a magnitude 7 or greater to create a tsunami so you’re going to know it if it is at all near the coast and if its further out to sea they will be evacuating the beaches before a distant one arrived.
I’m not talking about a giant quake, but rather the kind that might shake you awake or ones that feel somewhat significant but you don’t know if what you felt is as strong as it gets or if it was much worse elsewhere and thus maybe a very damaging one.
Plus we don’t all have iPhones. I just got a Windows mobile phone so wondering if there are aps written for it.
The review is right-on. My two favorites are also QuakeWatch followed by IFeltThat. I set QuakeWatch to ignore all quakes below 3.0 because when I went to the Inyo quake swarm location in the middle of the night, I was standing right on top of the epicenter and I couldn’t feel anything and a bunch of small quakes 3.0 and below happened right under my feet. So I guess it should be above 3.0 to feel anything. The scale is logarithmic so that would explain why.
Yeah, that would be helpful to be able to set it so that it ignores ones below a certain threshhold. I mean I guess there are all kinds of quakes in S CA but who cares about them unless they are over say 4.5 or 5 and even that is still not a real strong one although I guess if you are on top of it, it could feel that way.
The applications are only as accurate as the truth they’re given..
Most frightening quakes are dumbed down, and their epicentres moved to keep folks dumbed down. They don’t tie into tweet eye witness accounts or local K-wire media…
Magnitude often isn’t a good guide to intensity either.
Surprised you left out the best: Quake Warn
Quake Warn is the only Earthquake app that has push notifications that I’m aware of, and you can set it to only go off by certain distance and size. So you don’t have to keep checking the app to see if there has been any quakes within a thousand mile radius or whatever you wish to set it to. I got an alert about the 6.5 quake that hit offshore Northern Ca yesterday, I love it.