Thursday, September 10, 2015

Does rain cause earthquakes? WE INVESTIGATE.

A while back, the National Weather Service - Bay Area posted this on Twitter:


It's basically a graph of historical rainfall in September in San Francisco.  What's the first thing you notice?  BOOM, 5.07" in September 1904.  Typically, there's not a ton of rainfall in any year in September, so 5.07" really stands out.  And of course, about 19 months later, in April 1906, there was a VERY EXCITING EVENT in San Francisco.

So this got me wondering.  DOES RAIN CAUSE EARTHQUAKES.

Answer: YES.

In March of 1957, there was a 5.3 earthquake in San Francisco.  In December of 1955, SF got a ridiculous 11.47 inches of rain.  Remember all that rain last December?  That was 11.70 inches.  That's a lot of rain.  Point being, big rainfall in 1955 was followed by earthquake in 1957.  See the pattern?  PATTERNS ARE SCIENCE.

In December 1889, SF got a ridiculous 13.81" of rain.  This was followed in April of 1892 by not one but two earthquakes within a couple of days, a 6.4 in Vacaville and a 6.2 in Winters.  PATTERNS.

The wettest month in San Francisco history was January 1862, with a Mount Waialeale-like 24.36 inches.  Sidenote, can you imagine if we got 24 inches of rain today?  Local news would have to go to an all-rain format.  Anyway, the rainpocalypse of January '62 was followed in short order by a 6.3 in the Santa Cruz Mountains in October 1865.  December 1864 also had a healthy 8.91 inches of rain, so that probably didn't help.

SO WATCH THE FUCK OUT.  Last December, as I mentioned, we got a very healthy 11.70 inches.  This winter we may get more because of a looming El Nino.


If we get up to double digits in rainfall any month this winter, there will for sure be a bigass earthquake in the next 14 to 36 months.  There is no way this will not happen.  Make peace with your God and say goodbye to your loved ones.  We are all toast.

2 comments:

  1. The strangest part is that you may be on to something only because you're intuitive. I know this is a parody of magical-thinking-buttressed-by-crackpot-scientific-statistics, but I've been feeling the rumblings myself, like some skittish cat.

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  2. Michael - That's weird, I've had a lot of earthquake anxiety lately too. Although for me it's hard to sort out earthquake anxiety and just the generalized anxiety I have pretty much all the time. That New Yorker article about Seattle really pushed me over the edge.

    And wait, are you saying you DON'T believe that rain causes earthquakes? Look at the data! Wake up, sheeple!

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