Did Seattle go silent during the Superbowl?

Large-scale cultural events such as sports games and music concerts are known to cause localised seismic excitation. In this paper we investigate whether a comparable far-field 'quietening' could be observed during Superbowl LX (February 8, 2026) in the city of Seattle, hometown of the Seattle Seahawks, as people stayed indoors to watch the game. We find that a number of stations in metropolitan Seattle and other urban or semi-urban areas of Washington state experienced their quietest Sunday afternoon in the last year in some or all of the 1-40 Hz frequency band which we examined. Comparable behaviour is not identified at stations in uninhabited areas of Washington. These results support the hypothesis that at least parts of Seattle and the wider state were comparatively 'silent' during Superbowl LX.

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Publication Details

Journal
Seismica
Published
2026-04-13
DOI
https://doi.org/10.26443/seismica.v5i1.2651
Primary Topic
Seismic Waves and Analysis
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Did Seattle go silent during the Superbowl?

Benjamin Fernando
Seismica
Seismic Waves and Analysis
article

Did Seattle go silent during the Superbowl?

Benjamin Fernando
article en

Abstract

Large-scale cultural events such as sports games and music concerts are known to cause localised seismic excitation. In this paper we investigate whether a comparable far-field 'quietening' could be observed during Superbowl LX (February 8, 2026) in the city of Seattle, hometown of the Seattle Seahawks, as people stayed indoors to watch the game. We find that a number of stations in metropolitan Seattle and other urban or semi-urban areas of Washington state experienced their quietest Sunday afternoon in the last year in some or all of the 1-40 Hz frequency band which we examined. Comparable behaviour is not identified at stations in uninhabited areas of Washington. These results support the hypothesis that at least parts of Seattle and the wider state were comparatively 'silent' during Superbowl LX.

SeismicaVol. 5(1)
Planetary Science Institute (US), Johns Hopkins University (US)
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 18%
Seismic Waves and Analysis
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