"Earthquake clouds" refer to ribbon-shaped clouds of different colors, such as white, gray, orange, orange-red, etc. that appear over the earthquake area when an earthquake is about to occur. Its distribution direction is perpendicular to the epicenter and generally appears in the morning and evening. Height and length of earthquake clouds: According to visual estimates, the height of earthquake clouds can reach more than 6,000 meters, which is equivalent to the height of high clouds in meteorological clouds.
As early as the 17th century, there is a record in ancient Chinese books that "in the middle of the day or after sunset, the sky is clear, and there are fine clouds like a line, very long, which is a sign of earthquakes." In 1935, Longde, Ningxia, my country The county's "Reconstruction of Longde County Chronicles" records that "the sky was sunny and warm, and the blue sky was clear. Suddenly, black clouds were seen, like wisps, graceful like long snakes, lying across the sky and lingering for a long time. It was bound to be an earthquake."
However, research on seismic clouds in various countries around the world has only occurred in recent years, with my country and Japan taking the lead. my country’s research on seismic clouds began after the Tangshan earthquake in 1976. Currently, successful There are more than ten examples, and there are hundreds of examples of Japan's successful use of earthquake clouds to predict earthquakes. Interestingly, the person who first proposed the name "earthquake cloud" was not a seismologist, but a politician. He was the former mayor of Fukuoka City, Japan. Chuzaburo Nagakeyda once personally experienced the 1956 magnitude 7 earthquake in Fukuoka, Japan, and saw with his own eyes a very peculiar cloud in the sky during the earthquake. In the future, whenever this kind of cloud appears, there will always be an earthquake accordingly, so He called such clouds "earthquake clouds."
So, what kind of clouds are earthquake clouds? The biggest feature of this kind of cloud is its "strangeness", which is obviously different from ordinary clouds.
Sometimes a plane trail will be left in the blue sky. The common strip-shaped earthquake cloud is very similar to the plane trail, but thicker and fuller. It generally indicates that the epicenter is in the vertical line of the cloud direction. superior.
There is another kind of radial earthquake cloud, in which several strips of clouds intersect at one point at the same time, like a fan without a fan in the air. The intersection of the clouds is perpendicular to the ground and is the epicenter.
There is also a striped earthquake cloud, which looks like two rows of human ribs. It is more complicated to judge the epicenter based on this cloud.
Seismic clouds mostly appear in the morning and evening. The longer the earthquake cloud lasts, the closer the corresponding epicenter is. The longer the length of the earthquake cloud, the closer the earthquake occurs. , the more terrifying the color of the earthquake cloud looks, the stronger the corresponding earthquake intensity.
Currently, there are many opinions on the cause of the formation of earthquake clouds. Although each has its own reasons, none of them can completely explain the phenomenon that occurs before the earthquake, so it is still a mystery. Moreover, the earthquake itself is a very complex phenomenon. process, so to predict earthquakes, it is best to use a comprehensive method.
Seismologists believe that when an earthquake is about to occur, a large amount of heat is generated because geothermal heat accumulates in the seismic zone, or because the rocks in the seismic zone are subjected to strong stress and undergo intense friction, and this heat escapes from the ground surface. The air is heated to produce an updraft. This airflow forms an "earthquake cloud" at high altitudes, with the tail end of the cloud pointing toward the location of the earthquake. Some also believe that the inevitability of "earthquake clouds" lacks experimental data and may be a coincidence. Exactly how this needs to be further verified.
There are pictures below
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