Taylor Swift fans cause ‘2.3-magnitude earthquake’ during shows
Quake it off.
As if Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour wasn’t creating enough of a groundswell, Swifties caused such a ruckus during the Seattle leg that they generated the equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake — rivaling the legendary “Beastquake” of 2011.
“This was much bigger,” Western Washington University geology professor Jackie Caplan-Auerbach told King 5 after comparing the tectonic activity.
The groundbreaking phenomenon occurred over the weekend while the “Antihero” singer had performed sold-out back-to-back shows to over 144,000 fans at Lumen Field, the Seattle Times reported.
Little did the Grammy winner know that her concert would prove earth-shattering in the seismic sense: The activity from the three-and-a-half-hour marathon caused quite a commotion on a seismometer located next to the stadium, which prompted Caplan-Auerback to conduct a study to see if it surpassed the previous Lumen record caused by the Beastquake.
For those unfamiliar with Seattle sports lore, this seminal event occurred in 2011 after Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch scored a touchdown and fans went wild.
To see how the two events compared tectonically, Caplan-Auerback first analyzed data from the two Swift shows.
“I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals,” the scientist explained, per CNN. “If I overlay them on top of each other, they’re nearly identical.”
The only difference was that the Sunday performance was delayed by 26 minutes — which was corroborated by fans online, who said the show had indeed been postponed by half an hour.
She then cross-referenced the data with the number of the “Beastquake” and found that the discrepancy was only about 0.3 on the seismometer.
However, Caplan-Auerback said that in terms of overall magnitude, “Swifties have it in the bag.”
“This was much bigger than the Beast Quake in terms of the raw amplitude of shaking and it went on for a whole lot longer,” she explained, noting that the Swift concerts went on for hours while the 2011 post-touchdown cheering only lasted a few seconds.
Which songs prompted this record-breaking Tayquake?
According to Mouse Reusch, a seismologist at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network who used a sonogram to identify the tunes performed when the ground shook, the songs that prompted these Tay Tay-induced tremors were “Blank Space” and, perhaps fittingly, “Shake It Off.”
And the fan activity didn’t just register on the Richter scale: Swift herself praised her Pacific Northwest supporters for their seismic energy in a Monday Instagram post.
“Seattle that was genuinely one of my favorite weekends ever,” the “Bad Blood” singer wrote. “Thank you for everything. All the cheering, screaming, jumping, dancing, singing at the top of your lungs.”
Needless to say, the Tayquake marked perhaps the height of an all-star lineup of memorable Swiftie moments, which included fans “hijacking” a plane and women taking over the men’s bathroom during the Texas leg.
Swift is currently nearing the end of the Eras Tour, which could earn $1 billion in sales, potentially making it the highest-grossing tour of all time.
