A little before 7 PM this evening I felt a microquake in Silverlake. Of course it was so tiny few other people noticed it except those right on top of the quake and it reminded me of a fun little way to look up the EXACT epicenter of a quake.
The USGS provides the quake epicenter as coordinates. Mapquest allows you to look up coordinates on a standard street map. Grab the current quake off the USGS Recent Quakes site and plug it in an voila! You’ve got a location you can drive to! Of course if someone knows an easier way to do this and if Google Maps supports coordinates, please leave a comment. (Yes, there is a topozone link from the USGS site, but I find that it doesn’t always work for some reason.)
The quake today (a puny 1.9) was in Atwater Village in the block of Greensware Road between Tyburn and Glendale Blvd.
You are the most quake-aware person in the world! One Point Nine? That’s the seismic equivalent of me jumping rope in the backyard.
Wow… I actually felt this too. I wrote it off to someone in my complex slamming their door too hard :)
My favorite website for plotting maps via latitude and longitude is the Acme Mapper. Play with the pull down menus to see how easily the data can be manipulated.
Knowledge is Power.
Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,
Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department
LAFD Website: http://www.lafd.org
LAFD Blog: lafd-dot-blogspot-cot-com
I use the Terraserver at: http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com
And, if it has them, it’ll give you a choice of available maps for that area…(interesting if you want to see what your house looked like 20 years ago)
great info here. i felt this yesterday as i was sitting at my computer – i thought to myself, “was that a quake?” – i dismissed it as a truck slamming a door or something outside and went back to business. nice to know that it was actually a quake.
Thanks Brian and NVONFLUE – I didn’t know about the Acme Mapper and had no idea the Terraserver did coordinates. Super resources!
http://www.snellspace.com/wp/?p=159
points to an elegant solution, Google Maps & the USGS earthquake page. Latest quakes over 2.5.
It’s actually easy to map latitude and longitude on Google Maps. Unfortunately they don’t put a marker on screen. But if you go to maps you can just enter them into the blank like this:
34.114N 118.263W
Or you can edit a
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.114N++118.263W