CAN unusual clouds signal the possibility of an impending earthquake? That’s the question being asked following the discovery of distinctive cloud formations above an active fault in Iran before each of two large earthquakes occurred.
Geophysicists Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang of Nanyang Normal University in Henan, China, noticed a gap in the clouds in satellite images from December 2004 that precisely matched the location of the main fault in southern Iran. It stretched for hundreds of kilometres, was visible for several hours and remained in the same place, although the clouds around it were moving. At the same time,…
