“Earthquake weather” is often dismissed as not a real phenomenon, but a new study suggests a combination of drought and heat may have caused an earthquake that hit the Napa Valley in 2014.
When the magnitude-6.0 earthquake hit the Napa and Sonoma Valleys in the summer of 2014, it killed one person, injured several hundred and caused more than $500 million in losses.
The study recently published in the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth suggests land between the valleys is stretched each summer as groundwater levels fall beneath the valleys and the ground in the valleys sinks and contracts.
