Earthquakes

The U.S. Geological Survey has a latest earthquakes website that you can configure (and then, bookmark) by clicking on the white gear icon (top right) for options and settings. From the defaults I change the Earthquakes to 1 Day, All Magnitudes Worldwide, the Map Layers to Terrain, and the Time Zone to Local System Time. You can then click on the now-cyan gear icon to dismiss the right settings panel. Likewise, you can click on the cyan list icon to dismiss the left list panel. That leaves you with a cyan globe icon and a default map of the United States. You can now zoom out (or in) by using the plus/minus signs at the top left (or by using your scroll wheel). I get it to some manner of world-view that fits my particular browser window size and this I bookmark.

When a large earthquake hits, I scroll wheel over the place to zoom into it and often leave the browser tab there for a few days to watch the aftershocks develop. The following is a screen grab of the current situation based on yesterday's 7.8 Solomon Islands quake. With Auto Update on, new aftershocks will appear and stay red for an hour.

I love the detail in the zoomed-in maps. I'm intrigued by the fact that (in the above map of Makira) four of the islands to its north have an identical high point of 91 m (above sea level).