California sits on the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates, where the San Andreas fault system and many related faults take up their motion. The state records thousands of earthquakes every year, most too small to feel. Notable historic quakes include 1906 San Francisco (M7.9), 1989 Loma Prieta (M6.9), 1994 Northridge (M6.7), and the 2019 Ridgecrest sequence (M7.1). This page shows every quake the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program reports in California and just offshore, updated automatically. Click any quake for details and a shareable link.
No one can predict when an earthquake will strike, but USGS does forecast how likely strong shaking is over the long term. Enter a U.S. ZIP code to see the odds for your area, based on the same model used for building codes.
Own a seismometer — a Raspberry Shake, a DIY sensor, anything that reports ground motion? Register it and it shows up on the map above alongside official USGS data. Amplitude is a relative, unitless trigger strength (0–1000) rather than a calibrated physical unit, since contributed hardware varies widely. Need hardware? Here's a working DIY build (Pi Pico 2 W + LSM6DSOX) you can copy — source and wiring on GitHub.
Yes, the earthquake data itself is: LiveQuakes fetches the public GeoJSON feeds published by the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program directly in your browser and displays them as-is. LiveQuakes the website isn't affiliated with or endorsed by USGS — it's an independent, free viewer for their public data.
By default every minute, but you can set auto-refresh to every 30 seconds or every 5 minutes, turn it off, or hit Refresh manually at any time.
Yes. Viewing the live map and event list is free with no account needed. A free Google sign-in is only required if you want to register your own seismometer with the community station network.
Yes — a Raspberry Shake, a DIY accelerometer-based sensor, or anything else that can detect ground motion and make an HTTPS request. Sign in and register a station in the Community Stations section below to get an API key, then have your device POST trigger events to it. Registered stations show up on the map as diamond markers alongside official USGS quakes. Building your own from scratch? Here's a working example: a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W + LSM6DSOX accelerometer running an STA/LTA shake detector, reporting straight into this network — source and wiring on GitHub.
No. "Near me" distance filtering runs entirely in your browser. The risk lookup sends only the ZIP code you enter, or your position rounded to about 5 km, so LiveQuakes can fetch the USGS forecast for that area. It isn't linked to you or stored with anything that identifies you.
No, and neither can anyone else. No scientist has ever predicted a major earthquake (a specific time, place, and size). What USGS can do is forecast long-term probabilities from fault slip rates, past earthquakes, and how strongly the ground shakes. The risk lookup above shows that forecast: the chance of strong shaking at a location over the next 50 years, from the USGS National Seismic Hazard Model.