Taylor Swift’s concert in Seattle generated the equivalent seismic activity of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.
The data was recorded as the pop superstar played her sell-out Eras tour at Lumen Field on July 22 and 23 in front of a combined 144,000 fans.
Seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach said the activity was caused by the number of fans and the star’s sound systems.
It beat the previous record in Seattle, “Beast Quake”, set in 2011 during an NFL game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New Orleans Saints.
Ms Caplan-Auerbach, a geology professor at Western Washington University, told CNN she compared seismic data from both concerts and the 2011 NFL event.
“I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals," she said.
“If I overlay them on top of each other, they’re nearly identical."
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
She said the difference between the NFL event and the Swift concerts 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.
Posting on Instagram about the Seattle dates, Swift said it was “genuinely one of my favourite weekends ever.”
“Thank you for everything. All the cheering, screaming, jumping, dancing, singing at the top of your lungs,” she said.
Music concerts have been known to generate seismic activity before, such as a 2011 Foo Fighters concert in New Zealand.
The dates were towards the end of the US leg of the Eras Tour, Swift’s first in five years.
She is next due to play in California, before beginning an international leg of the tour from August 24 in Mexico City.
