5.1 Magnitude Earthquake Near San Jose, CA

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73799091/executive

by mfiguiere • 4 years ago

163 165 4 years ago

earthquake.usgs.gov

samstave3• 4 years ago

Loma Prieta in ~1989 was NUTS.

I lived in lake tahoe at the time and was a freshman in HS and was at football practivce at 5:04 PM when it happened, and my dad was waiting in the car and it car shook so much he got out because he thought us kids were pranking him by jumping on his bumper....

This 5.1 is a good thing, as it has relieved geo-stress... (I hope!)

but as a california native, I think of earthquakes like I do california poppies (which I just planted a bunch of) they are magnificent, just dont pick any...

EDIT: The 1989 earthquake was also in october.... October 11 I think... but I wonder if the seasonal shift in temperatures affect earthquakes. As October is generally the best month in the bay area weather-wise...

macintux• 4 years ago

I caught a much smaller one when I was young and had the exact same reaction your dad did, sitting in a parking lot with no one around. I had a better excuse than him: I was in central Indiana, and who ever heard of a quake there?

(No, not looking forward to another New Madrid quake.)

russellbeattie• 4 years ago

The stories of the New Madrid quakes are insane. The earth was literally rolling, fissures opened up spewing enough gases to block out the light and more. And the aftershocks went on for months. Hard to imagine.

0xB31B1B• 4 years ago

5.x earthquakes are not “stress relievers”, that is a common fallacy.

kirubakaran2• 4 years ago

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/eqproc/grdmotion.php

Especially: https://histre.com/highlights/kirubakaran/5b7c1756

outworlder2• 4 years ago

but I wonder if the seasonal shift in temperatures affect earthquakes.

This one was 4 miles deep. That would be surprising.

mc32• 4 years ago

You'd need like a hundred 5.1s to "relieve the geo-stress".

cowmix• 4 years ago

I flew to the bay area for the first time in spring of '90 for a business trip. I was driving in my rental car with my paper street map(s). I went to cross the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and, well, a lot of was gone because of the quake.

hirundo• 4 years ago

I was in an office tower in Santa Clara, about half way up, on the sixth floor. The building swayed so much I thought it would pitch over and kill me. But the valley had gotten off easy compared to the Santa Cruz Mountains. My brother's home looked like a giant toddler and played with it for half an hour before putting it down again. If we had gotten that kind of treatment in Santa Clara I wouldn't be able to write about it.

That earthquake shook me deeply. It's not a coincidence that I now live on a whole different tectonic plate.

ROTMetro• 4 years ago

Was in the Santa Cruz area at football practice in 1989. My knees were in my face. We were not able to go into our house for a week until it was determined safe. Us and all our neighbors camped in our front yards and had a huge block party. The community was left to fend for ourselves with no water and no power but everyone coming together. Grocery stores opening with no power letting in like 20 people at a time. It was probably the most a part of a community I ever felt in California. Hiking Nisene to see the epicenter was cool. Me and some other football players went around looking for people that could use overexcited football linemen teenager help. We moved so many trees/branches, and were feed so much BBQ steak (no power so everything in fridges was getting grilled up and shared).

samstave3• 4 years ago

So funny that you say this... my grandfather in Saratoga CA - he went "oh I forgot something" and ran back into the house and came out with a bar-full of things in his arms and served Gin-n-tonics to all the neighbors on their lawn just after the quake (my grandfather was a nuke eng that built nukes for GE at the time, but was a really funny norwegian punster... and he knew how to make everything a party)

baggy_trough3• 4 years ago

Loma Prieta was preceded by two 5.x foreshocks within a year.

Sakos• 4 years ago

One in June, one in August, then Loma Proeta in October. Is seasonal weather ever a relevant factor for quakes?

baggy_trough3• 4 years ago

Seismologists believe not.

jofer4• 4 years ago

Put simply, no.

The details are messier because groundwater flow very much does affect earthquakes (poroelasticity), but by and large, seasons don't affect groundwater flow significantly at the depths involved. E.g. wet vs dry weather doesn't matter. But on the other hand, a lake filling up or draining can, especially in terms of triggering very small earthquakes.

MPSimmons• 4 years ago

Not at the scale of quakes like this. Frost quakes are a thing, but very localized:

https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/what-is-a-fros...

guenthert• 4 years ago

First time I noticed vertical, not just lateral movement. 5.1 isn't all that big, but this one was close to me. Good that the building is a wood structure, otherwise I'd be looking for damage now ...

benlivengood• 4 years ago

I got an Android alert before the waves arrived in the East Bay (Oakland-ish) which is neat from an SRE perspective.

mayli• 4 years ago

Got that too, but almost at the same time when I feed it.

anontrot• 4 years ago

Stop feeding the Earth quake god damnit!

baggsie• 4 years ago

That must be quite terrifying given the location - does the alert indicate the strength of the quake?

outworlder2• 4 years ago

It does not. Not even sure it's possible.

s1artibartfast8• 4 years ago

My alert indicated the magnitude and I received it before I felt the quake

raggi5• 4 years ago

My shakealert had a prediction of 4.9.

rconti2• 4 years ago

predicted a 4.8 about 5-8sec before i felt shaking in redwood city.

chaboud• 4 years ago

In Sunnyvale the alert hit with enough time for me to grab my mug (so it wouldn't spill on my laptop) and step away from things that could tip (TVs, bookcase, standing desk)...

Followed by a couple of tiny wobbles and then business as usual.

jedberg2• 4 years ago

If you felt it please fill out the USGS report: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73799091...

Even if you didn't feel but live in the Bay Area please fill it out, they need that data too!

Justin_K• 4 years ago

Do you know what the do with the data? Genuinely curious.

samstave3• 4 years ago

They likely analyze it

namrog84• 4 years ago

Having more data points can help give more insights into the quakes propagation. I'm no expert but I'd imagine it's not perfectly circular an is influenced by a variety of factor that with more data points makes it easier to learn things about under ground and quakes.

eddsh2• 4 years ago

Didn’t feel it in Palo Alto but my wife did in Stanford. I’ve yet to experience one!

mdon• 4 years ago

felt it mildly on California Ave, in Palo Alto.

eddsh2• 4 years ago

I’m on Middlefield road in midtown, weird you felt it and I didn’t! Slightly closer to San Jose than you.

gnicholas• 4 years ago

Interesting, we definitely felt it in Menlo Park. Perhaps being on the second floor made it more noticeable? What stood out to me was how long it was — it felt like we were moving for 15-20 seconds, though it could have been shorter.

jmathai• 4 years ago

I grabbed my phone a few seconds after feeling the quake and Googled "earthquake in california today". I'm amazed that the earthquake showed up as the top result with an exact coordinate and magnitude.

tsunamifury• 4 years ago

Those with pixel phones got notifications 10 seconds before the earthquake wave hit them.

floydian10• 4 years ago

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/723/

baggy_trough3• 4 years ago

That would depend on where they were.

jedberg2• 4 years ago

I'm guessing you're in SF or Oakland?

mentat• 4 years ago

Seemed even a bit longer before that on the peninsula coastside. The whole thing felt magical, to even know that much beforehand.

rbolla• 4 years ago

Is it true?

tjohns2• 4 years ago

Depends on where in the Bay Area you were:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73799091...

Santa Clara had 2 seconds of advance warning, and Sunnyvale had 4 seconds. San Francisco got 18 seconds of warning, though was outside the "ground motion" zone.

rconti2• 4 years ago

myshake pinged my apple watch while i was recording a cat. Cat definitely did not detect it before myshake, I don't think he even noticed it until the actual shaking.

eins12342• 4 years ago

My Samsung got the notification from Google too, so probably not a Pixel exclusive thing.

Though I wish it would have overridden silent mode. 10s of advanced warning isn't all that helpful if I only find out about the notification 10 minutes later.

anarazel• 4 years ago

My notification arrived minutes late, interestingly.

sosodev• 4 years ago

I believe can actually just type "earthquake" and it will show the same result!

andirk• 4 years ago

City workers digging up the street today in front of my house in Berkeley. I thought they hit a pipe! Glad it was just a huge earthquake

yumraj5• 4 years ago

You felt it in Berkeley?

kstrauser• 4 years ago

I felt it in Alameda. It wasn't strong, but was very noticeable.

josuepeq• 4 years ago

Got the ShakeAlert notification; but felt no quake. Nothing noticeable at all in San Francisco/Twin Peaks. It’s all bedrock up here.

Teknoman117• 4 years ago

I didn't really feel it in San Mateo, but the blinds were swinging in the office so it was definitely moving some stuff up here.

delabay• 4 years ago

didn't feel in san mateo either

vincentriemer• 4 years ago

Weird, I'm in Foster City and felt the strongest shaking I've ever felt in my time in the Bay Area.

Kina• 4 years ago

Foster City will amplify any shaking since the entire city was built on compacted fill and reclaimed earth.

alanwreath2• 4 years ago

I came here only to question why this news even registers on HN news.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

HN works on a voting system, so that people can register what they feel is important, and if enough people do that then things show up on the front page.

There's a bit more information available here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

AnimalMuppet• 4 years ago

Because it interests us.

sophacles2• 4 years ago

Are you asking: "why does the site with 'news' in it's name report news?"

Or are you asking: "how does this earthquake in the place where much tech is centered and a large number of HN users live pertain to HN?"

The answer turns out to be the same: it's relevant to a lot of people here and they upvoted it.

alanwreath2• 4 years ago

These are all obvious answers. Still begs the question of what's the value of having these discussions here. There are plenty of discussions that are not permitted on HN (even if they would garner useful discussion). I only posit that this type of news also lends no value to this forum (SV locals don't or shouldn't depend on HN for local emergency news), and so should be removed/banned. Just my 2¢ - downvote away.

iancmceachern2• 4 years ago

Because many of us live in the area and therefore are deeply impacted by things like this.

dietr1ch• 4 years ago

Deeply impacted is an overstatement. Not a lot happened really, but maybe most people here are not used to earthquakes.

throw8383833jj2• 4 years ago

it's interesting to compare and contrast your experience with someone else's. And since this is an experience everyone around here has had, we have it all in common, unlike say if there's a robbery on 1st street which might affect less than .0000001% of users on this site.

tick_tock_tick• 4 years ago

Cause most of us live here.....

Or at-least depend on companies located here.

shriphani2• 4 years ago

My garage door shook for a bit but I got none of these alerts. I'm on tTmobile, do I need to sign up somewhere ?

oars• 4 years ago

What mobile device do you have?

shriphani2• 4 years ago

ios

redwood• 4 years ago

I didn't feel it at SJC

manofmanysmiles• 4 years ago

I barely felt it in Berkeley, and thought I was imagining it.

nonrandomstring2• 4 years ago

How far are we from decent prediction?

Many years ago ago I looked quite deeply at stick-slip friction models, the mathematics, dynamics and signals.

I'd wager, in the time since 2005, there's a lot we could do with machine learning, predictive signal analysis and good historical data.

Even 5 minutes warning could save a lot of lives.

Any ML + geo-scientists on the case?

daveaiello2• 4 years ago

A seismologist from Berkeley said on KCBS that the ShakeAlert system worked in the case of this earthquake. So many people in the area were warned.

I heard this on Audacy from the Philadelphia area.

daveaiello2• 4 years ago

Info on how ShakeAlert works: https://twitter.com/USGS_ShakeAlert/status/15849836003780321...

jofer4• 4 years ago

ShakeAlert and similar systems are awesome, but not exactly what most folks mean by a prediction, FWIW. They're meant for warnings of seconds, but not for things on the scale of minutes or hours or days.

Not to take away from ShakeAlert in any way though! Just clarifying that in terms of another comment I made about earthquake precursor signals.

ShakeAlert and similar aren't about precursors, but instead are about "the earthquake has happened, let's tell folks before the damaging surface waves reach them".

jofer4• 4 years ago

I really want to write up a long response to this... I used to be closely adjacent to this field, and I do ML work in other domains. ML is mostly irrelevant for this, though.

Here's the short version:

We're good at predicting where. We're still not good at when.

Understanding what segments of a fault zone have built up the most elastic strain is something we're really quite good at these days. Given historical earthquake data, GPS measurements of deformation, and knowledge of the geometry and makeup of the subsurface, we can reasonably accurately model what segments of a fault are most likely to fail next. No ML needed or wanted.

The issue with the "when" is what the precursor signals are.

The precursor signals we're most likely to be able to reliably measure involve drilling down and putting sensors on both sides of the fault zone and measuring the sonic velocity across the fault zone repeatedly. As rocks or even a fault gouge begin to fail, they have to dilate slightly so that grains can rotate into position to slip (bad explanation, sorry). This dilation causes a drop in sonic velocity. Stresses on the rock mass as a whole also have velocity signals. Lab experiments have observed this fairly reliably. We've actually set things up to measure this in the field as well -- look up SAFOD. There were some likely precursor signals (a bit contentious, but it's fair to say there were interesting signals in the data). However, this type of instrumentation just isn't practical to deploy at scale.

Other possible precursor signals involve hydrologic changes (e.g. well waters rising / changes in pore pressure) or Radon spikes, both due to the same dilation. Again, though, these are local effects and difficult to deploy a system to measure. (e.g. you need a deep borehole for the hydrologic changes, and the radon spikes are most reliably observed at depth as well)

There is one more controversial category that is easily observable: ionospheric perturbations. GPS data is sensitive to the ionosphere, and one of the things you need to do in geodetic GPS station operations is correct for changes in the ionosphere. We tend to have tons of geodetic GPS stations deployed along fault zones. Folks have noticed some very interesting ionospheric perturbations before very large earthquakes. There have been a lot of papers published on this, but it's still not too widely accepted, last I checked. The proposed mechanism (piezoelectric effect and/or dislocation glide/creep building up charge) and the observed magnitude of change don't match. It also has only been documented as a precursor around very major earthquakes (which are rare) and only in retrospect.

At any rate, tons of data don't help if it's all noise. The data that we think should have the most signal is _really_ hard to get. Things are still in the "promising, but a long ways off" state when it comes to predicting "when", and seismologists are _very_ careful to avoid doing work that could be taken as predictions due to past PR SNAFUs.

nonrandomstring2• 4 years ago

Lovely response, much more than I'd hoped for. Thank you sir.

I suppose another issue that then arises, even if we did have decent prediction, is how to present and use predictive info. A "traffic light" system leading up to a countdown? How not to scare people, destroy economies with false positives and off-timing?

A strange conclusion from my study (for sound) is that where eathquakes are concerned the next best thing to none at all is regular earthquakes.

s1artibartfast8• 4 years ago

Are there any good maps or information on the energy stored in different specific faults and how much could be released when they go?

Enginerrrd• 4 years ago

Well, I'm not a domain expert here, but I have followed this a bit over the years. Here's my understanding:

1. Prediction actually is getting quite good, just not on the time scales that we're interested in, which would probably be somewhere between weeks and minutes.

2. I don't think that at the moment we have access to input variables with sufficient power to be predictive on those time scales. Right now, I think one of the best predictors of large EQ's on short time scales is a sudden increase in variance of seismic activity. Which is sort of obvious when you think about it... The best predictor of a big slip is when it's already started slipping.

3. There have been good gains on minute time scale warnings simply by using sensors and communication networks that can outpace the speed of the seismic waves. This can actually be incredibly helpful for seismic sensitive systems!

daok• 4 years ago

South-East San Jose and I felt it. Received a notification on my Pixel phone as the house was shaking. Nothing broken, but for the 5-6 seconds it lasted I had the reflect to hold my monitors (on arms) because they were shaking.

raggi5• 4 years ago

Was very disappointed that my iOS device had no alerting.

s1artibartfast8• 4 years ago

Android is partnered with Shakealert but Apple has not. There are third-party apps that you can get for iPhone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShakeAlert

raggi5• 4 years ago

While I understand this in some sense, the efficacy of these systems going through the regular push message queue is going to be poor.

tanseydavid• 4 years ago

Felt the first one in Central Marin.

Today is actually the 33 year anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake -- weird.

ChrisCinelli• 4 years ago

https://www.britannica.com/event/San-Francisco-earthquake-of... - It was Oct 17, 1989

etrautmann• 4 years ago

That was one of my first memories and a totally wild experience as a young child in a hotel room on market st. I got to eat nothing but strawberry milk for about three days since since that was about all we could easily get, or so I remember.

dumpHero2• 4 years ago

Slightly off. That was on Oct 17, 1989.

smcin4• 4 years ago

It was not in the least terrifying and actually a big yawn; no known damage or injuries; "near San Jose" is inaccurate, it was 14km east of San Jose up the (fairly sparsely-populated) foothills near Alum Rock, 6.9 km depth, 37.311°N 121.677°W, inside Joseph D. Grant Park, zipcode 95140, total population only a tiny 191. So, remote, not urban and nothing like all those San Andreas movies. We felt the floor ripple for a couple of seconds and that was all. All transit is still running, just at reduced speeds (standard practice just in case there's a big aftershock, which there almost never is).

You want to worry about something that's actually broken, then worry about whether the US MNT will get it together to call up leading goalscorer Jordan Pefok by 13 Nov deadline for the World Cup. Now that's worth losing sleep over. Or worry about Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico reconstruction from Hurricane Ian; Cuba got it bad.

USGS.gov has a page up near-instantaneously with the details including crowdsourced reports of perceived intensity by location, as they always do: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73799091...

PPS: in that area, Mt Hamilton (4265') and Lick Mill Observatory are worth a visit. And over west in Menlo Park visitors can visit the USGS station for free, that's a very fun and educational thing to do.

mint23• 4 years ago

This comes off a bit as minimizing/dismissing concern of the next big one, and also seems to be expressing disappoint that this one wasn’t more exciting instead of being “a big yawn; no known damage or injuries.”

smcin4• 4 years ago

Nonsense, I live in Silicon Valley for 23 years now, this has nothing whatsoever to do with "the next big one", today's one was purely a 5.1 in a remote sparsely-populated area up the hills inside a county park with no reported damage or injuries, population only 191 and they hardly even have any two-storey buildings inside the entire park, not that those were reported damaged either. By the way, IIUC from geologists it's actually good and healthy to have frequent small earthquakes to blow off pressure and avoid becoming the "next big one", hence today's non-event is good news not bad news. I actually showed you multiple ways to instantly read the USGS data (coords, intensity, depth, population, total lack of buildings higher than two stories) to understand that this was a non-event not the "next big one", not even in the neighborhood. Technical literacy matters, sensationalism seriously doesn't.

Today's non-event was actually a Good Thing in that it also gives us yet another occasion to calibrate earthquake early-warning sensors, to stay prepared for any actual serious earthquake, which this wasn't.

I also said nothing whatsoever about "excitement" or "disappointed", so do not misrepresent me. I did imply that media is increasingly sensational (which it is) and lazily skewed towards merely collating cellphone "eyewitness reports" from places with 4G coverage, without making any semi-objective comparison to the rest of the planet; and I correctly pointed out that zero people were affected here in SJ today whereas 11 million Cubans were affected by Hurricane Ian [0], to pick one obvious example. I also know some friends-of-friends whose house was severely damaged by the 11/2020 Marikina, Manila floods/Typhoon Vamco/Ulysses [1] (98 deaths, 19 missing, 360K rescued, ~43000 houses damaged).

Also, a magnitude 6.2-6.5 struck rural northern Luzon, Philippines earlier today [2], no reported damage or injuries [3], but noone's mentioning that.

[0] https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-hurricane-ian-recovery...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Vamco#Philippines_2

[2] https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000iwds...

[3] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1684866/magnitude-6-7-rocks-ab...

throw8383833jj2• 4 years ago

who cares about a Football match, I'd rather hear about a earthquake.

smcin4• 4 years ago

You're intentionally misrepresenting me: I clearly said:

You want to worry about something that's actually broken, then worry about whether the US MNT... _Or worry about Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico reconstruction from Hurricane Ian; Cuba got it bad._

So, we already established within a handful of minutes that zero Californians were affected, but 12 million Cubans, or many thousands of Haitians or Puerto Ricans. Yet we're wasting time debating the California non-event instead of any other thing that actually matters. Or even, at absolute minimum, teaching people the technial literacy to quickly understand that the CA earthquake had no impact, and thus to resist sensationalism. It was extremely clear from the original that that was my point.

To state the same point another way: even (say) tonight's Fetterman-Oz debate (PA Senate race) will have more permanent impact on people's lives. Or, Hurricane Ian. Like I said.

not2b2• 4 years ago

My home office in Campbell (just south of SJ) is on the second floor so I got more of a shake than my wife downstairs got, though her MyShake app gave her a few seconds warning.

For those not in earthquake country, this was a moderate quake, not big enough to cause damage other than maybe knocking something over right near the center. The epicenter was in Joseph Grant Park to the east of San Jose, near Mount Hamilton.

ipnon• 4 years ago

If you want early earthquake alerts, the Governor’s office sponsors UC Berkeley to make the MyShake app. This app could save your life!

https://myshake.berkeley.edu/

yumraj5• 4 years ago

tried installing it on iPhone and set the HomeBase - keeps on crashing.. :(

hujun• 4 years ago

similar experience here, the UI design is confusing, tell you to select an area but apparently you can't select/drag on the map, you can only typing the address then many times the auto complete doesn't work, and it seems you have to use the incorrect auto completed address...

yodon4• 4 years ago

Their servers are probably getting hammered. Try again tomorrow or in a few days.

abc_lisper• 4 years ago

Multiple friends reported that it didn't give an alert. On the lookout for a reliable app - does any of you have suggestions?

lucb1e2• 4 years ago

I didn't get any notification on my phone. How does it try to figure out whether you should get one? Do you need to turn on location services, have a cell tower connected, or is it detecting pre-waves (I really know nothing about earthquakes) using the accelerometer?

s1artibartfast8• 4 years ago

Do you have iPhone or Android? If iPhone, you need to download an app

lucb1e2• 4 years ago

I'm on Android but in Europe. Was just curious how it tries to determine this as I turned off automatic location uploading to google.

fragmede3• 4 years ago

S-waves travel faster than P-waves, so USGS detectors listen for those in order to produce the warning.

sbuttgereit• 4 years ago

I felt in San Francisco. I was on the sixth floor of one of the buildings in Civic Center. The shaking was pretty mild (which I'd expect given facts of what happened), but the duration was rather longer than many of the smaller nearby quakes you're likely to feel.

s1mon• 4 years ago

I live in SF on bedrock, but on the 5th floor of a ~100 year old steel framed apartment building. Definitely felt it, but nothing like the 5.1 in 2001, when I was on the 11th floor of the old Hamm brewery building in SF. That swayed back and forth way too much for my taste.

For the first few minutes a Google search for "earthquake" initially had it located some distance from "San Hose". Clearly someone was typing that it in manually.

tjohns2• 4 years ago

You can view a map here of how much advance warning people with ShakeAlert-enabled phones (like Pixel) got before the earthquake:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73799091...

Santa Clara had 2 seconds of advance warning, and Sunnyvale had 4 seconds. San Francisco got 18 seconds of warning, though was outside the "ground motion" zone.

lazide2• 4 years ago

I honestly thought it was someone rolling a big cart across the floor above mine. I was really surprised when I saw 5ish magnitude.

Definitely worth checking the earthquake kit though!

andrewinardeer• 4 years ago

Let's hope this is not a foreshock.

sizzzzlerz• 4 years ago

Was at lunch when it hit. I felt it sitting down at a table. I looked at others in the store and I didn't see anyone reacting to it at all. It was kind of subtle but it lasted for 5 or 6 seconds. Just a little bit later, the earthquake reporting apps on my iPhone and iPad show a notification. Nearly 15 minutes after it happened, I get an alert on my phone from the state emergency services department reporting the shake. Quite useless, I'm afraid. A 5.1 is the largest we've had around here in sometime.

yodon4• 4 years ago

If you're close to the epicenter there's no way for any app to give you advance warning.

Any app is going to make use of the fact that internet messages travel faster than earthquakes, so the farther you are from the epicenter the more warning you'll get. Close to the epicenter is going to be no warning regardless of whose app you use.

ksaj3• 4 years ago

In Canada, we have mandatory Amber Alert notifications that affect all modern cell phones. It is loud so you aren't likely to miss it. These alerts cannot be muted, and require the user to acknowledge receipt or another alert will come shortly thereafter. This helps to catch people during alert time in case their phones are not on, or they're in the shower, or whatever.

I am surprised California and other wobbly places don't use the same system, with the addition of quake and forest fire alerts. Everybody here knows the alert sound instinctively now, so even if you're in public and hear someone else's phone go off, we all know what it is.

dry_soup• 4 years ago

Japan has had this for years, but California's app for this is still in beta IIRC.

It's funny to me that one of the world's tech capitals has taken so long to get this rolling. To be fair, California doesn't have earthquakes as regularly as Japan (at least not of the same magnitude). I guess this is another symptom of our crumbling institutions in the US, we only get services quickly if there's a profit to be made. In the popular imagination, innovation is only the domain of private companies.

s1artibartfast8• 4 years ago

I for one hope they never make the obnoxious amber alerts impossible to disable.

Rebelgecko2• 4 years ago

We do have the same system, commonly used for Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts, Blue Alerts, fires, floods, COVID-19 lockdown, foreign missile tests, etc. However there's no mandatory ack, and except for "presidential alerts" they can all be turned off. That's what I did after I got woken up for an evacuation notice 20 miles away from me, feel back asleep, and got woken up again by the followup message 30 minutes later saying it was just a drill.

Anyways, the wireless emergency alert system has like 5-30s of latency. I suspect that might be enough to make push notifications a better solution. There's a # of apps taking that approach (full disclosure, my employer makes one of them), I think they all ingest data from a private USGS Kafka server

hot_gril5• 4 years ago

I don't recall ever getting alerts for earthquakes, though.

hot_gril5• 4 years ago

I've also heard Canadians complain that they get many pointless alerts that can't be disabled.

ksaj3• 4 years ago

It is true. Our alerts have no respect for geography. You can be woken by an alert at 4 in the morning over a custody battle two cities away.

To me, this kills its entire purpose. The boy who called wolf, and all...

I haven't had one in a really long time now, so maybe they've fixed that.

subarctic• 4 years ago

As other commenters have mentioned, they do have the same system in the US, but they actually use the proper alert types, unlike in Canada where they're all just thrown under the highest alert level that can't be ignored or silenced.

beefman• 4 years ago

Handy calculator to convert between magnitude and energy:

https://earthalabama.com/energy.html

yumraj5• 4 years ago

Another one, 3.6 , few minutes ago

aaroninsf• 4 years ago

Per https://t.co/WJdzMWgZSY (USGS),

the modeling for an aftershock in the coming week predicts:

64% chance of a 3+

16% chance of a 4+

2% chance of another 5+

and today's quake being a foreshock is also possible, with the model's predictions being

0.2% (1 in 500) chance of a 6+

0.02% (1 in 5000) chance of a 7+

5.1 Magnitude Earthquake Near San Jose, CA

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