precursory

Any precursory comparisons to “Hamilton” are understandable, given that both stage musicals focus on an outspoken writer, a pivotal president and a years-long war that determined the country’s future.

"There are some cases where there are dramatic and very distinctive precursory seismic signals that precede a catastrophic landslide, sometimes by as much as days," Highman noted.

“It doesn’t give you a precursory, predictive ability because it’s a statement of how you’ve summed it rather than what’s going on at a particular earthquake,” she adds.

These observations suggest perhaps there really are precursory signals for at least some huge quakes.

But researchers said there are few large-scale earthquakes to study in California and that makes it difficult to indicate whether precursory signals at one fault would apply to others.