【History Archives】

As Hurricane Irma barrels toward Puerto Rico,History Archives Cuba, and Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, it's showing its strength in an unusual way.

With sustained winds of over 185 mph churning up waves and a a monstrous storm surge, Irma has started to register on seismometers in the Caribbean typically used to measure earthquakes.

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Seismologist Stephen Hicks from the University of Southampton in the UK shared several tweets on the subject Tuesday and explained why, exactly, Irma is registering.

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As Hicks notes, what the equipment is picking up isn't tremors from an earthquake but, rather, seismic noise from Irma's winds and waves. As the storm's winds increase the closer it gets to the island where a seismometer is, Hicks told USA Today, the winds rock trees -- like Hector the palm tree -- and that energy gets transferred into the ground.

Likewise, Irma's waves crashing into the coastline can cause minor hits of seismic energy that register.

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As Hicks explains, it's not uncommon for this type of equipment to pick up hurricanes or, over near the UK, some of their stronger winter storms.

These incidents, he notes, are all very shallow, recorded at the surface -- whereas the faults that cause earthquakes are miles underground.

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So while Irma is powerful enough to be detected by this equipment -- certainly a powerful display of the destructive energy contained within a Category 5 hurricane -- the hurricane itself is notcausing earthquakes.

Once Irma has come and gone, though, and as residents are left to clean up and rebuild, so, too, must these seismic stations be rebuilt. They're an important part of detecting seismic and volcanic activity in the region.

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For now, though, the stations serve to reiterate the sheer power of this storm.

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