Large storms may be strong enough to prompt tremors
Feels Like Earthquake Weather...
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. The rate of aftershocks following the 23 August 2011, earthquake near Mineral, Virginia, increased sharply as Irene passed by.
The researchers are not the first to examine a potential link between hurricanes and seismic activity. Shimon Wdowinski, a seismologist at the University of Miami, Florida, says that he has found a strong correlation between extremely wet tropical cyclones striking Taiwan and big earthquakes that occur up to three years later. He thinks that the erosion of landslide debris in such a storm's aftermath triggers a change in fault loading, eventually producing an earthquake.
That work is not yet published. But another study by researchers in the United States and Taiwan found a similar association between slow earthquakes - which take places over hours or even days - and tropical cyclones in Taiwan.
http://www.nature.com/news/hurricane-may-have-triggered-earthquake-aftershocks-1.12839
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. The rate of aftershocks following the 23 August 2011, earthquake near Mineral, Virginia, increased sharply as Irene passed by.
The researchers are not the first to examine a potential link between hurricanes and seismic activity. Shimon Wdowinski, a seismologist at the University of Miami, Florida, says that he has found a strong correlation between extremely wet tropical cyclones striking Taiwan and big earthquakes that occur up to three years later. He thinks that the erosion of landslide debris in such a storm's aftermath triggers a change in fault loading, eventually producing an earthquake.
That work is not yet published. But another study by researchers in the United States and Taiwan found a similar association between slow earthquakes - which take places over hours or even days - and tropical cyclones in Taiwan.
http://www.nature.com/news/hurricane-may-have-triggered-earthquake-aftershocks-1.12839
If they can, why shouldn't they be able to trigger an earthquake? Before an earthquake there is pressure. Not sure if one can say that the system is in a meta stable state. For many meta stable systems very little energy is needed to trigger the boom. When a hurricane really registers on a seismograph, its energy is cannot be that little.
Why bad style? Even if it makes perfectly sense, it has to be researched and quantified. Just saying: 'Not surprising' is definitely not enough. :-)