Taylor Swift’s Eras tour performances at Lumen Field in Seattle on 22 and 23 July generated seismic activity equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake, according to seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach.
A local seismometer detected activity generated by dancing fans comparable to the famous 2011 “Beast Quake”, when Seattle Seahawks fans erupted in response to running back Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch scoring a touchdown in an NFC wild card game against the New Orleans Saints.
Swift sold out both nights in Seattle, with 72,171 fans at the Saturday show breaking a venue record of 70,000 set by U2 in 2011. Swift’s Eras Tour is one of the most expensive ever, costing an estimated $100m or more.
Concerts have been known on occasion to register seismic activity, such as a 2011 Foo Fighters concert in New Zealand attended by 50,000 fans and a 2022 Garth Brooks concert at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. But seismic magnitudes were not provided from those concerts.
Caplan-Auerbach, a geology professor at Western Washington University, told CNN she saw the Swift comparison in a Pacific north-west earthquake group she moderates, so compared seismic data from both concerts and the 2011 NFL event.
I guess I should show the data. Swifties > Seahawks fans.
— Jackie Caplan-Auerbach 🇺🇦 🌻 (@geophysichick) July 27, 2023
(except data from the concert may not be caused by the fans--it may be the sound system, so not really a fair comparison). pic.twitter.com/szwowOYQFi
“I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals,” she told CNN. “If I overlay them on top of each other, they’re nearly identical.”
She noted the difference between the NFL event and the Swifties dancing was just 0.3, but said the Swift fans still beat out Beast Quake.
“The shaking was twice as strong as ‘Beast Quake’. It absolutely doubled it,” she said.
The earth-shaking cheer after the Seahawks touchdown lasted for just a moment, Caplan-Auerbach said, while the dancing and cheering at the concert, and music from both nights, comprising about 10 hours of data, massive energy driven into the ground, generating the seismic activity.
Swift’s Seattle concerts came toward the end of the US leg of the Eras Tour, her first in five years. Shows in California are lined up next, with the international part of the tour beginning on 24 August in Mexico City.
