Is that an earthquake or a SpaceX launch going off? To help discern the difference, California offers a free early-warning earthquake app called “MyShake” available for download to Google Chromebooks or devices using Apple’s MacOS.
As much as 15 seconds before the 7.0 trembler off Humboldt County on December 5, nearly a half million people in Northern California got a MyShake alert, giving them a bit of time to reach safety. The Bay Area felt the next Big One, too, the December 9 quake in western Nevada. MyShake gave a 10-second early warning of the 5.7 magnitude shaker more than 250 miles away.
The app was developed at UC Berkeley in 2019 and has been downloaded more than 3.7 million times. Developer Richard Allen said the app uses the accelerometer in every cell phone to record quakes, resulting in a “citizen scientist” squad of seismometers. The phones have an extraordinary ability to detect earthquakes as small as magnitude 1.5 and uses an algorithm to differentiate them from the normal jiggling of a cell phone in a pocket.