Hurricane Irene may have triggered earthquake aftershocks

Hurricane Irene, a powerful storm that ran north along the US East Coast four days after a magnitude-5.8 earthquake rattled Virginia in 2011, may have triggered some of that earthquake’s aftershocks, scientists reported today at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America in Salt Lake City, Utah. The rate of aftershocks usually decreases with time, says study leader Zhigang Peng, a seismologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta. But instead of declining in a normal pattern, the rate of aftershocks following the 23 August 2011, earthquake near Mineral, Virginia, increased sharply as Irene passed by.

Peng and Xiaofeng Meng, a graduate student at Georgia Tech, then compared the aftershocks’ timing to atmospheric-pressure readings in the earthquake zone, testing their hypothesis that a decrease in pressure caused by the storm's travel up the East Coast might have reduced forces on the fault enough to allow it to slip. That effect would be particularly strong for a thrust fault such as the one involved in the Virginia earthquake, Meng says. In that type of fault, one block of crust slides over another as the two blocks are pushed together.

www.nature.com...


Wow thats nuts! Always knew hurrricanes were powerful but never thought they could cause earthquakes. Interesting read

I read that yesterday on Science daily. Any event that happens can add energy to the environment. The hurricane gave the land energy, the energy can cause sinkholes and can add pressure or decrease pressure on fault lines. Everything is tied together in an entrophy. The sun can also add energy to the system along with the core of the earth.

On the flip side, usually if the sun gets hotter, the radioactive decay usually decreases a tad bit for some strange reason to balance things out. It is very complex but a little predictable if you look at the whole picture.

Crystals can hold energy like a capacitor and slowly leave the energy out to balance things. Rocks are often crystal structures as is sand.

Now I'm gonna be transfixed by watching for tremors after cyclones/hurricanes pass over faults.
Cool