It was a big night for the Seattle Seahawks fans, including thousands from B.C. who travelled below the border for the big game.
Not only did their team win against the New Orleans Saints, 34-7, they also set the Guinness World Record for crowd noise with a 137.6 decibel level, and shook the stadium enough to register a small earthquake.
John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and a professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, says the seismic activity was registered by a seismometer about 100 yards away from the stadium.
It is the same instrument that recorded activity in 2010 when Marshawn Lynch got a 67-yard touchdown during a playoff run against the Saints.
“So that is why we paid attention to the game this time,” says Vidale.
“Whenever the Seahawks scored a touchdown we could see the stadium vibrating from all the Seahawks fans jumping up and down. The fans were very impressive.”
Vidale says the activity was equal to a magnitude 1 or 2 earthquake on the Richter Scale.
He is not too surprised, given the excitement of the game.
“That does make sense,” he says. “The fans probably could shake the whole structure, but at the same time these instruments aren’t very sensitive, being in a city, it’s really noisy.”
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