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Raphmedia

Take with a grain of salt. This is pseudoscience at best.

There were some reports of earthquake lights[1][2][3] and earthquake clouds[4][5][6] recently.

There's some online communities dedicated to those, e.g. https://quakewatch.net/predictioncenter/

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

[2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/men-film-glowing-sn...

[3] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/789760/Colorado-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_cloud

[5] https://weather.com/vertical/video/strange-clouds-seen-in-co...

[6] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/20/boulder-rare-helix-clo...

Edit: I mean accurate forecasting and prediction using this data is pseudoscience.

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Pseudoscience? From TFA:

““The earthquakes show up as RF noise because of the electric field lines, now scientifically confirmed to change the way the ionosphere reflects RF,” Schwarz said.

Schwarz has cited an article in the October 2018 edition of Scientific American, which, he says, explains the phenomenon. (See Erik Vance’s “Earthquakes in the sky,” Scientific American, October 2018, p. 44.)“

I meant accurate forecasting based on those is pseudoscience. The phenomenons themselves are real.

To me, "pseudoscience" means that the approach isn't grounded in the scientific method. It's not pseudoscience to collect data to try to predict a phenomenon, even if the prediction isn't successful. That's like saying "well, we set up this experiment to test if there's a link between x and y, but when we looked at data in this one particular way, the results weren't significant so this entire field is pseudoscience."

I'm sure scientists could find a way to use this data. What I'd call pseudoscience is people online sharing photos of clouds and then stocking on water and food. You are right that it is scientific, but it's dangerous to make claims like this.

What does that cloud formation have to do with earthquakes? That cloud was filmed in Boulder, not anywhere near southern California. The light thing seems pretty neat and there looks to be a bunch of possible explanations for the source. Although some of the videos I watched looked more like flashes of electricity coming from powerlines snapping or transformers blowing which could definitely happen if the earth was shifting.

I'm just the messenger, I have not spent any time researching the details of those claims.

There's some overlapping between some online communities I participate in and the doomsday preppers/tracker community so that's why I stumbled on this.

The Wikipedia page for Earthquake Lights talks about lights as far as 740 km from the epicenter, so I'd bet that's the answer people who associate those with the quakes will tell you.

As I said take it with a grain of salt.

> What does that cloud formation have to do with earthquakes?

Last I read about the alleged phenomena, you're supposedly looking for straight line or ripple clouds that form in seconds. The explanation is that some mechanism (originally friction) is boiling groundwater; but proponents can no longer agree on what mechanism leads to formation of the clouds.

Why would earthquakes cause a significant amount of groundwater to boil?

Supposing there were enough water vapor to do that, how would boiling groundwater form clouds at all, much less in seconds? There's still a lot of earth in the way between the fault and the sky.

Ground shaking does not mean that energy is converted into heat. Does the ground feel hot after an earthquake? Warm at all?

Earthquakes, right? Not volcanoes or magma chambers? If this phenomenon were real, wouldn't you expect it to occur right before a volcanic eruption, which actually involves large amounts of magma, near the surface, which could actually vaporize large amounts of groundwater? As far as I can tell, that doesn't happen either. The water vapor erupts with the molten rock, and mainly condenses into volcanic clouds because it has volcanic particles to condense around, not because the water vapor itself is enough to form clouds on its own before dissipating.

Care to elaborate on why you call it pseudoscience? I disagree

I meant accurate forecasting based on those is pseudoscience. The phenomenons themselves are real.

Sure, but it’s still an interesting observation. Seems like it would merit further investigation to see if there was a related causal mechanism.

It's more than just pseudoscience. There are reports of animals being able to predict earthquakes before they occur, and even records of other kinds of electromagnetic activity before quakes.

I worked on a project at Stanford that set up EM sensors around the bay area to possibly detect signals before major earthquakes.

I mean, right now it's all purely hypothetical but it's absolutely worth trying to find it if it's there, and compeltely within the realm of worthwhile science.

> There are reports of animals being able to predict earthquakes before they occur, and even records of other kinds of electromagnetic activity before quakes.

There have been all kinds of tests with animals but so far, all animal behaviour that looks like predicting earthquakes is only their sensitivity to low amplitude-high speed P (pressure) waves, which humans usually don't feel.

Pigeons are very sensitive to this. Apparently a survival instinct from making their home in cliff faces.

It seems to trigger a flight reflex, it makes them take off real fast. I use a high voltage arc generator to scare pigeons off my deck. The sound from the arc seems to trigger the same response. It is certainly much more effective than yelling at them or waving one's arms around.

I forgot the exact details of the research as I did it in undergrad, but I guarantee my academic adviser, the PhDs at the USGS, and the people providing the grant thought of that.

There's evidence for real prediction, including reports of a ramp up EM energy a day before a quake.

> There are reports of animals being able to predict earthquakes before they occur, ...

No offense but talk to people who have had "psychic readings" performed and plenty of them will swear to you that psychics are, in fact, 100% real.

Even if an individual believed a psychic has some kind of supernatural power, as a society, we large understand the mechanics of how psychics do their thing.

With animals, we have no clue why there appears to be a tendency for them to act oddly before an earthquake, and up until recently, we didn't understand how birds could navigate as effectively as they do.

It's possible that what we see with animals is just coincidence or an artifact of how we perceive our own memories after traumatic events, but it's also possible that an animal or some set of animals can perceive something associated with certain earthquakes.

It's also possible there exists a teapot on the other side of the sun. One day our science will be able to tell us but until then we it is still possible.

Perhaps you would be better served with some humility about your understanding of science. Science involves searching the natural world for evidence for certain phenomena. Yes, sometimes informal observations warrant formal research.

People have researched ESP and debunked it. Currently, we are still researching earthquake prediction.

No one is claiming anything supernatural is occurring, of course. There may be real changes in the earth's crust before earthquakes which send out signals we haven't yet found.

Have you been in an earthquake before? I remember sleeping during a quake and then waking up right before the main shock hit. I’m not sure what woke me up, it could’ve been a preliminary shock, but I very vividly remember being jolted awake right before the earthquake wave hit. It’s entirely possible that an electromagnetic wave precedes a shock, but it’s unlikely that there are significant waves hours beforehand if there’s actually a causal relationship to the movement of the plates themselves.

It would be far more likely that the EM pulse happens with slightly faster propagation than the kinetic pulse (like milliseconds, not hours).

I’ve experienced a number of them and never felt anything leading up to them.

The last decent one I can remember was a few years ago around maybe 2 or 3 AM and made my apartment roll back and forth. The rolling woke me up but my partner slept through it. And I tried not to panic so they could just sleep through it, hoping it would end soon.

Also, we didn’t have anything hanging or that could easily fall onto our bed in the bedroom so I think staying in the bed was an okay move.

I live in a single family home now even higher up the Twin Peaks area of SF so who knows how this house will handle the next one. Hopefully it won’t be too bad. At least the ground is solid and not considered a liquefaction zone. And my new neighbors seem to have some kind of thing going on where they stock first aid supplies for first responders in disasters which seems nice and thoughtful.

Though I just don’t understand why SF won’t use our missile warning system for earthquake warnings. Seems like they could make a special earthquake tone and warn everyone if one happens in another city and is heading our way. Even seconds of warning would be so helpful. Could be the difference in being able to jump under a table or desk vs. getting crushed by falling stuff.

There are three types of waves that travel through the earth's crust during an earthquake at different speeds: primary, secondary and surface waves, which arrive in that order.

Perhaps one of the first two waves woke you up, and then the surface wave is what "felt" like an earthquake to you.

In fact, earthquake warning systems detect P-waves early, send out alarms, and give people a few seconds to stop subways and get outside before the surface waves roll in. It's not the same as earthquake prediction, though.

Do you how fast these waves travel versus sound in the atmosphere? Or, how these waves themselves might sound qualitatively when they shake nearby structures in the air?

On more than one occasion, I think I've anticipated an earthquake based on sound. I can only describe it like an approaching but amorphous activity, a bit like when large flocks of birds take to flight over an open field or when a wind gust goes through a forest.

I think I've noticed this sound only with relatively nearby epicenters (5-25 miles). The very distant ones usually seem more silent and my first recognition is the jiggle and displacement, or perhaps the creaking sounds of the surrounding structure if I am indoors.

This. My wife was in her backyard with her dad during the Loma Prieta quake, and a few minutes before the quake they saw a momma possum with her babies climb down the side of the house and walk off into the bushes.

It could be a coincidence, but reports of animals acting oddly before quakes aren't uncommon, and we've recently found a plausible biological basis for how birds sense magnetic fields, so some animal or animals may be able to detect signs that an earthquake is more likely to occur.

" they saw a momma possum with her babies climb down the side of the house and walk off into the bushes"

I don't understand. What would a possum do instead if there was no earthquake? Stay on the house? Walk out into traffic on a highway?

> What would a possum do instead if there was no earthquake? Stay on the house?

During daytime? Yes, mostly, IIRC, they are nocturnal and come down during the day mostly when in food distress or disturbed.

But, of course, if you saw a possum come down (perhaps from hunger, or because a crow dropped a husk on it and disturbes it, or whatever) without a near-following earthquake, you might say “Hmmm, odd”, but it wouldn't be a major notable event. But two uncommon events near in time get linked mentally, even if there is no relationship.

there's plenty of interesting mechanisms that are very plausible, e.g. piezoelectric pressure buildup.

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