How to use it
Pick the city nearest to where you live, and every earthquake the USGS listed in the past 24 hours appears with its distance from that city, nearest first. On a phone or computer whose time zone matches one of our 60 cities, that city is picked for you; otherwise choose one from the list. “Use my location” uses your device's position instead, rounded to about 1 km and kept on the device. Distances show in miles when your time zone is in the Americas and in kilometres elsewhere; the km / miles switch changes it any time.
Tap any row in the earthquake log to open its details: depth, whether a seismologist has reviewed the event yet, the USGS place name, the coordinates and a link to the USGS event page. The map then draws the shortest path from your city to the epicentre, with the distance on it. You can copy a link to that one earthquake; the link names the quake, never your city.
Two maps
The Globe turns to face your city and its nearest earthquake. Distances are measured on a sphere, so the globe shows the shortest path (the great circle) as it really is; drag it or use the arrow keys to look around. The Distance from home map puts your city at the centre: every point is drawn at its true distance and direction from home, so the dashed circles at 1,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 km are perfect circles. Dot size is magnitude; dot shape is time since the quake (filled with a double ring under 1 hour, filled for 1 to 6 hours, hollow for 6 to 24 hours), and the same shapes appear in the log. The colour repeats the shape; it never carries meaning alone.
How the distance is calculated
We treat the Earth as a sphere with the mean radius of 6,371.0088 km and use the haversine formula for the great-circle distance: the shortest path along the surface between your city and the epicentre (not through the ground, and not the depth). Compared with the precise distance on the WGS84 ellipsoid (GeographicLib), the sphere is off by at most about 0.6%. Seoul to Los Angeles is 9,586.75 km on the sphere and 9,607.62 km on the ellipsoid. Distances under 1,000 are rounded to the nearest 1; larger ones to the nearest 10. Miles are kilometres divided by 1.609344, rounded the same way.
The direction is the starting bearing of that shortest path, in 16 compass points. Because the Earth is round it can look odd on a flat map: from Seoul, Los Angeles is northeast, not east.
Where the data comes from, and what is missing
Your browser loads the USGS “All Earthquakes, Past Day” feed directly. It is public-domain data from the U.S. Geological Survey and is updated every minute. Quarry blasts and explosions in the feed are left out, and we tell you how many. The USGS says its lists should not be considered complete: outside the U.S. its map may not show quakes smaller than M5.0, and quakes under about M4.5 can be hard to locate. For local quakes outside the U.S., your national agency is the official source. Automatic solutions can be revised later, so each row says whether the event has been reviewed by a person.
Reading the shaking information
An earthquake has one magnitude, but shaking intensity differs from place to place with distance, ground and depth. One step of magnitude is about 10 times the amplitude and about 32 times the energy. We never estimate the shaking at your home. When the USGS has published them, the expanded row shows the “Did You Feel It?” report count and highest reported intensity, the ShakeMap highest instrumental intensity and the PAGER alert level, with their sources, exactly as published.
What this page is not
It is not an alert service and it does not predict earthquakes or tsunamis. For warnings and safety guidance, follow your official local agencies.