Does an eclipse cause storms and earthquakes along the path of totality?

The total solar eclipse, which will be witnessed by millions of Americans in April, has led to a series of baseless conspiracy theories, including that the government is planning to “hijack” the event.

A total eclipse will be experienced in 13 states on April 8, a rare astronomical event in which the sky briefly turns dark during daylight hours.

As the date approaches, one theory posted online suggests it could unleash a wave of earthquakes and thunderstorms.

A woman watches the annular solar eclipse in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on October 14, 2023. Online claims suggest the solar eclipse may cause thunderstorms and earthquakes. A woman watches the annular solar eclipse in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on October 14, 2023. Online claims suggest the solar eclipse may cause thunderstorms and earthquakes. Douglas Magno/AFP via Getty Images

Claim

A post on Reddit by user u/UniversalSurvivalist, published on March 17, 2024, said, “Update on Totality track, 16,000 lightning strikes and possible earthquake across America, thanks to submarine manager Amos for compiling this information.”

The post included a separate post on “The most intense March nights in recent memory. In the past hour, more than 16,000 lightning strikes occurred from western New York to northeast Texas – spanning more than 1,200 miles!”

Berggren's post included a photo of the storm front. This was put side by side on Reddit with an image of “PATH OF TOTALITY”, which shows where a solar eclipse will cross the US in April. The path of this solar eclipse showed some similarity to a storm front.

The Reddit post also showed a map of earthquake hazards in the New Madrid Fault Zone near Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, and Alabama.

the facts

The claim is not supported by evidence.

To be clear, the eclipse will be more than two weeks away. The post was published on X by Fox 35 Meteorologist Orlando Bergren on March 15, 2024, reporting on severe storms impacting multiple states across the United States. His post has nothing to do with the allegations made on Reddit.

The U.S. National Weather Service issued thunderstorm warnings across the South and Southeast last week, Crisis 24 reported. Fox 35 Orlando weather maps on March 15 showed the storm front stretching from Texas to Illinois.

While the “total path” of the April solar eclipse follows some of the path of this storm, they are unrelated to anything else. Experts also found that the eclipse may have a minor effect on the weather and has nothing to do with earthquakes.

Giles Harrison of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, who studied the impact of solar eclipses in the UK in 1999 and 2015 on the weather, told Newsweek that there are small effects caused by cutting off solar radiation.

This “results in a decrease in air temperature which can also be associated with decreased wind speed and slight changes in wind direction,” Harrison said. However, the possibility of increased thunderstorm activity was “unlikely.”

“The effects on the cloud are more subtle, but always of great interest for viewing conditions at climatically marginal sites,” Harrison said.

“We tried to investigate this with our National Eclipse Weather Scientific Experiment in 2015, but not conclusively.

“Cloud dissipation is often reported around the peak of the eclipse, which corresponds to reduced convection, as can occur at sunset.

“Therefore, increased thunderstorm activity during the eclipse seems unlikely.”

Francisco Diego of University College London, a veteran of 20 solar eclipse expeditions, told Newsweek that the only effect of a total solar eclipse is a rapid cooling of the “very local atmosphere and ground” for just a few minutes.

Diego added that claims about earthquakes and thunderstorms are “irresponsible fabrications” and do not “deserve any serious attention.”

Ingo Müller Woodarge of Imperial College London, who has published work on the effect of solar eclipses on Earth's upper atmosphere, told Newsweek that while the eclipse's shadow has a beneficial effect in the upper atmosphere, the effect is “much less.” It can be seen in the troposphere, or weather layer.

“You could say that the moving shadow causes local cooling, by a few degrees, the release of atmospheric gravity waves and a degree of atmospheric turbulence,” Mueller-Woodarge said.

“Under the right conditions, this could contribute to a localized thunderstorm, but since the impact of an eclipse is so small in the lower atmosphere, you would be lucky to find this – there is certainly no direct causal relationship that every eclipse causes thunderstorms.” Or lightning.”

“There is absolutely no causal relationship between eclipses and earthquakes,” Müller-Wardag added.

He said: “The presence of the Moon causes gravitational tides, but it is much weaker to cause earthquakes or volcanic emissions, unlike Jupiter’s moon, where Jupiter’s gravitational force works to ‘massage’ its crust.”

“Whether the moon passes in front of the sun or not has absolutely nothing to do with earthquakes.”

Judgment

bloomer.

Research shows that although eclipses may have a small effect on temperature, there is no direct causal relationship between thunderstorms and eclipses and absolutely no relationship between them and earthquakes.

Fact-checked by Newsweek's fact-checking team

Uncommon knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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