Canie, Roger, 2cents-its great that you are looking into this scientifically. You might look also at the Kp index-what happens when it gets into the red zone (is that Kp>6?)
www.sec.noaa.gov/today.html

I have, and have read, Lowell's thesis. I'm in a proposal deadline crunch, but maybe someone could remind me to look at what he did on solar-EQ correlations, after Tues, when I return to suburbia.

There was a big X class flare in, I think June (4th?) 2000 (?), followed by a real obvious global flareup of M>6 EQs. But, it might be that one of the first EQs was big (>7?) and may have triggered some of the rest. But, since then, there have been a lot of X class flares, and periods of Kp9, and I have been underwhelmed by the seismicity that followed. Kind of shook my confidence that something was going on. Amd, the section of Lowell's thesis where he correlated extra-galactic sources of earthquake triggering shook my confidence in his statistics-since he got a high correlation there and I just don't believe it. Lowell's thesis is public info-anyone can buy it from University Microfilms, or get it on interlibrary loan. Lowell sent me a copy a couple years ago. Interesting stuff.
Chris