Check out my favorite NOAA space weather page-there was no hint of this storm (red bars=Kp) coming. There were no large flares, not talk about coronal mass ejections. Was this a side-swipe that caught them by surpise?

Maybe this a chance to discuss earthquakes and magnetic storms. I am a person who was more-or-less convinced that there was a connection-I learned this from Lowell, and then talked to a couple of professors who knew Lowell, who had a physical mechanism that seemed plausible. But, now I'm not convinced anymore. I watch the space weather and the occurrence of California and larger global earthquakes. But, I don't see any relationship, expecially with the largest storms where you would expect one. Of course, I don't do any of this quantitatively, and I don't check the coincidence of the shock arrivals with occurence of small earthquakes. I did notice that the Adirondacks earthquake was at the height of a long-duration storm. Lowell says that Mid Ocean Ridge earthquakes occur after (?) storms. If this is the case, should be pretty straightforward to put all M4.5 earthquakes that occur in the world, separated into Mid Ocean Ridge vicinity and other, on a graph along with Kp....(I'm not volunteering). Then, there would either be a clear relationship, or not. If not so clear, then what does one do with this? If a few earthquakes are being triggered, but not very many, what do you do? One of the NOAA pages shows the Aurora on a map of the globe. Should someone be looking at areas where surface magnetic fields are fluctuating? This is probably measured at ground observatories......Just trying to challenge those of you who are in to this to do better/to advance the science/to make this all more scientific.
Chris

• NOAA space weather page