Closest Supermoon of the Century / Tidal Waves and Major Earthquakes Watch

The Full Supermoon on November 14, 2016 will be an extraordinary sight! A rare, once-in-a-lifetime Sky Event.

This Supermoon will have a dramatic effect on the tides and, for many people, November’s Full Moon will be the largest and brightest Full Moon of a lifetime.

The supermoon (perigee full moon) on November 14, 2016, will bring the moon closer to Earth than it has been since January 26, 1948.


What’s more, the moon won’t come this close to Earth again until November 25, 2034. That makes the November 2016 full moon the closest and largest supermoon in a period of 86 years!

The moon will turn full at 8:52 a.m. EST (1352 GMT), just 2.4 hours after it comes within just 221,541 miles (356,536 km) of the planet. (The moon's average distance from Earth in its elliptical orbit is 238,900 miles, or 384,470 km.)

Expect a large range in ocean tides (exceptionally low to exceptionally high) for the next few days.

Major Earthquakes May Be Triggered By The Moon Say Japanese Researchers.

A new study has argued that major earthquakes, such as those that devastated Indonesian in 2004, Chile in 2010 and Japan in 2011, are more likely to occur during full and new moons – the two occasions during each month when tidal stresses are highest.

Researchers found “that there is strong correlation between tidal stress fluctuation and earthquake occurrence in several regions close to the epicenter of the Tohoku earthquake”.

The study, published in the journal ‘Nature Geoscience’ and conducted by a team from the University of Tokyo, argues that the same gravitational influence that the moon has on the oceans may also trigger earthquakes along Earth’s most fragile fault lines.

The research team calculated the levels of ‘tidal stress’ before major earthquakes of the last few decades and found that high levels of stress were often followed by major quakes.