Hurricane Sandy Rattled Most Of The US: Study

The massive Hurricane Sandy that hit the East Coast shook up much of the U.S., with seismographs across the country picking up the seismic waves, according to a new study.

The study, from University of Utah, found distinct seismic waves created by the storm. These waves can be created from meteors hitting the earth, mines and construction sites.

"We detected seismic waves created by the oceans waves both hitting the East Coast and smashing into each other," said Keith Koper, director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations. The strongest seismic waves were detected when the storm moved toward Long Island, New York and New Jersey.

Koper said that there is no magnitude scale for the microseisms caused by hurricanes like Sandy, as storms last for hours while earthquakes deliver a massive amount of energy in a few seconds. The microseisms due to Sandy were around 2 to 3 on a quake magnitude scale.

"We were able to track the hurricane by looking at the 'microseisms' [relatively small seismic waves] generated by Sandy. As the storm turned west-northwest, the seismometers lit up," said Oner Sufri, a University of Utah geology and geophysics doctoral student and co-author of the study, according to a news release.

The shaking was caused not just because of the waves that hit the coast, but also due to waves that hit other waves in the ocean, researchers said.

The seismic activity created by Sandy was tracked by Earthscope, which is an array of 500 seismometers initially placed in California in 2004. Earthscope is funded by the National Science Foundation. The array has now been moved eastward and most of the seismometers are now located from Minnesota to east Texas (east of line) and from Lake Erie to Florida. Many of the seismometers are located in the Pacific Northwest.

A video of the seismic activity caused by Sandy can be seen here.