Released Sept. 13, 2007
MANHATTAN, Kan. - Natural disasters have been the focus of attention lately and one question that has surfaced is "Is there earthquake weather?" said Mary Knapp, who is the state climatologist for Kansas.
This idea that there is such a thing as earthquake weather surfaced back in the times of the ancient Greeks, when Aristotle proposed the theory that earthquakes were caused by wind trapped in caves, Knapp said. He thought that the weather would be hot and calm before earthquakes.
"As modern science has developed, we know that earthquakes are the result of geological processes well below the area of the surface and subsurface of the Earth affected by weather," said Knapp, who directs Kansas´ Weather Data Library, based at Kansas State University Research and Extension. "Earthquakes can happen at any time and during any weather. And, although not as common nor generally as severe as in California, they do happen in Kansas."
According to the United States Geological Survey, the most recent earthquake in Kansas was a 3.1 event on March 23 of this year that was felt in Atchison and Nortonville, Knapp said.
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Contact: Mary Lou Peter-Blecha, mlpeter@ksu.edu
