Magnitude-8+ Earthquake, 87km SW of Pijijiapan, Mexico

While this is very plausible, it wouldn't explain the historical accounts of "earthquake lights" that have been reported as far back as the 1600's (http://srl.geoscienceworld.org/content/85/1/159)

Edit: It's also been reported around the world that these lights can occur days, even weeks before an earthquake happens.

There's a lot of different explanations for it, but I understand that it's never been definitively explained.

Unlikely. Have not seen it for other types of grid damage.

This is what you call "a theory", but it's one with no evidence to back it up. Can you point to other videos of electric grid damage that look similar?

The idea of "Earthquake lights" is also a theory, but it's becoming increasingly more likely these days as evidence piles up.

This explanation is posted whenever earthquake lights are reported, but it's wrong. I have a few reasons:

First. So the explanation goes, during the earthquake power substation transformers and fuses blow, causing these lights. Problem is, the grid doesn't sustain that level of damage during these earthquakes. Yes, the power usually goes out and there is grid damage, but the amount of damage is nowhere near 'every substation blowing', even in the most severe quakes. So the number of lights and number of grid faults do not equal.

Second. Earthquake lights present in the sky, not on the ground beneath them. If substations were blowing and creating light, they would light objects in their immediate vicinity (e.g. buildings) more than they would illuminate clouds. But that doesn't happen, and in fact the lights appear within the cloud layers themselves rather than appearing as a projection onto them, as they would if the light source was at ground level.

Third. These lights have been witnessed out to sea and over offshore islands, where there is no power grid.

That last point is the most compelling for me, because I personally witnessed earthquake lights, less than a year ago, offshore, during the November 2016 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake. During that earthquake, I had this (night time) view: https://imgur.com/a/Nt2wD

I received an email aurora alert late last night UK time, so perhaps there was increased solar activity?

Wouldn't it happen during strong wind as well in that case?

why did i get downvoted? seems that hn is populated by a bunch of ufo believers/bitcoin investors like types that would rather believe than fact check https://youtu.be/GL82cKwG8Ik?t=1m9s

Tides have an influence on earthquakes [1], but spring tides due to Sun and Moon lining up happen about twice a month, so I don't think that the Eclipse is a likely cause.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_triggering_of_earthquake...

Sort of; they found that the probability of a quake along shallow thrust faults increases about 3x during full and new moons in general (of which an eclipse is a special case, with no special risk):

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-position-moon-or-planets-affec...

r/conspiracy aside, looks like the redditor's main theory is that there is some sort of casual link between solar flares and earthquakes. Should be an easy thing for a data scientist to debunk or validate...

He predicted an earthquake in the Philippines and other areas that didn't happen 2 months ago and one in New Zealand 1 month ago. He also made a prediction for a 9.0 earthquake in Nepal after the eclipse and slowly dropped the number over the days to fish out a "prediction". He was also hedging his bets on this earthquake and was giving preference to Japan, not Mexico.

The guy's a charlatan that was basically throwing predictions at the wall till they stuck and is now hoping no one notices his failures.

They'll probably add trumpet sounds.

Each point release just about doubles the force of the earth quake. Makes me wonder how my mom handled the Good Friday one in Anchorage, which was at 9.2.

That's a really bad joke.

I expect 9.0 will force some hardware updates.