About EQRadar

An independent, map-first view of earthquakes reported to the USGS catalog.

What EQRadar does

  • Monitoring: shows earthquakes after they occur and are reported by the USGS. Feeds refresh about once a minute; the catalog may take several minutes or longer to list an event, and early magnitudes and locations are often revised.
  • Historical exploration: searches the USGS catalog by date, magnitude, depth and region. The catalog is extensive but is not a complete record of every earthquake ever to occur — small events in sparsely instrumented regions and earlier decades are under-recorded.
  • Official forecasts: displays USGS Operational Aftershock Forecasts when they exist, with their region, time window, issue time and uncertainty.
  • Timeline: replays when earthquakes occurred in a bounded catalog selection. It shows event times, not seismic waves or tsunami travel.
  • Shaking Maps: shows official USGS ShakeMap estimates of shaking intensity by location.
  • Tsunami Alerts: shows official messages from the U.S. Tsunami Warning Centers. EQRadar is not a warning authority; follow tsunami.gov and local officials.
  • Volcanoes: shows the official status of U.S. volcanoes. The ground-based alert level and the aviation color code are separate systems.
  • 3D Depth Explorer: shows catalog earthquakes in a region in three dimensions, with a depth histogram and cross-sections. Vertical exaggeration is always labelled.
  • Event Update Tracker: shows how an event's origin (time, location, depth, magnitude, review status) changed across the versions USGS still retains.
  • Learning Center: short lessons, quizzes and a glossary, written from cited official sources.
  • Alerts: notifies you about earthquakes already reported near places you choose, in-app while EQRadar is open.

What EQRadar does not do

Exact earthquake prediction is not available. EQRadar does not predict earthquakes, compute its own risk scores, or provide early warning before shaking. Public catalog polling is not a certified early-warning system. For earthquake early warning in supported regions, use official systems such as ShakeAlert-powered alerts.

Science notes

  • Magnitude measures the size of an earthquake at its source. It is not the same as the shaking intensity at a location or the damage caused.
  • Counts of past earthquakes describe historical activity, not future risk.
  • Depths can be negative when an event is located above the reference datum (e.g. in mountainous areas).

Independence

EQRadar is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Always follow guidance from local emergency authorities.