Hi All. When Canie posted the link to the Earthquake Tracker I felt this was something I wanted to learn more about. I sent them an e-mail. Here is their reply. Take Care…Don in creepy town.

Can you tell me if the time being used is PDT, or GMT/UTC.

“We use PST so we don't need to change at daylight savings time and back again.
Our master computer is synchronized with NIST time each day to a couple of seconds. Then each monitor computer is synchronized to the master computer when it calls in each day to download data.”

What is the affective range of this equipment? At what distance would it be able to pick up a quake of 5.0Md in the making?

“We have a noise floor down to 5-10 pico-Tesla per root hertz. We can see a car go by at about 200-300 ft.
I think that we can see a M5 at 10-15 miles. I "proved" this by taking readings at points about 4-5 miles from the Sept. Napa 5.2 quake and saw good signal at 5 miles. I think 10 miles is a fair extrapolation, possibly more. When we see a suspicious signal from a fixed site, the plan is to do a spiral search with a portable to determine the range.”

I realize that the more sensors you have the more accurate you can determine the magnitude of expected quake. It should also help to determine the location of the expected quake.

“With sensors every 20 miles along major faults, we hope to see a maximum at one or two sites to help locate the activity.”

At present time I use the data sites from USGS. I know from past experience they work most of the time.
I suspect you can get false signals so is there a way you can determine if it is a false signal? I also suspect you can get a lot of "noise" so is there any chance the noise could cover up a signal of an expected quake. When viewing the data for the Hayward area I see what I feel may be noise. Is this what it is?

“We knew that we would see BART ELF noise in Hayward--and it is overwhelming. We took a portable up to the top of the hill (3-4 miles) to the east, and most of the noise went away. The site will be moved there this summer.”

Any additional information you can give me would be appreciated.

“We have 50 kits being built, and 13 working (more coming on line each week). It is a challenge to keep them all working, but we will try to do so. They are set up with removable cards (5) so we can pull bad cards and plug in good cards to speed the process of repair. We had a grant request in to the State of California for 50 more sites in southern California--but missed the cutoff with a bad score by one reviewer (said it couldn't be done with ELF) There are over 100 papers that say it can and had been done--but mostly with small networks. We hope to build a large network to be close to the next big quake.”

“Our frequency response for ELF magnetic fields is 0.05 to 4.5 Hz, right in the main bands that Stanford saw in 1989 at Loma Prieta Mt.”

By the way my home is in Hollister so you can see why I have an interest in earthquakes.

“I live 1000 ft. from the San Andreas in Portola Valley--so I'm interested too.
We have a site in Hollister, just north of the town on Fairview Rd.”

You may also want to view our web site. Thank You...Don

“I did--it's great.”
Tom