Makarskyy said he uses GOES to check air quality, national alerts, wildfire preparedness guides and more. Back at home, he said, he was surprised to see that although one of the most widely used weather apps showed the air quality around Los Angeles International Airport to be "moderate," when he viewed a hyperlocal, more precise air quality measurement using GOES, it showed the air quality to be much worse.

"As the developer of this app, I knew it offered exact latitude and longitude," he said.

GOES is far from alone in seeing a spike in usage due to the rise in disasters. The Watch Duty app, founded in 2021 and developed by a nonprofit group, has become practically ubiquitous in the LA area since the fires erupted. It was the top free app on iOS for much of last week and was still in the top five on Monday, providing LA residents with a precise reading on where fires are burning and spreading, which neighborhoods are in evacuation zones and the location of power outages.