HURRICANES can trigger swarms of weak earthquakes and even set the Earth vibrating, according to the first study of such effects.
When Hurricane Charley slammed into Florida in August 2004, physicist Randall Peters of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, had a seismometer ready to monitor any vibrations in the Earth’s crust. He did so for over 36 hours as Charley travelled briefly over Florida, then slid back out into the Atlantic.
As the hurricane reached land, the seismometer recorded a series of “micro-tremors” from the Earth’s crust. This happened again as the storm moved back out to sea. Then, as…
