I didn’t know much about earthquake science. I also couldn’t confirm that there is strong relationship between drought and earthquake.
The information is from a book describe Tangshang earthquake happened in 1976.
Maybe moon shape could affect earth, I don’t know. But in that book, it said we predict Haicheng earthquake and drought was a reason why we made this decision. BTW, it’s said that is the only one earthquake we had predicted successfully.
Earthquake/drought connection.
There was a terrible earthquake in the 1960’s in Nicaragua after a severe 7 month drought. At the time I thought that this might have been caused by the drying up of the water table, the land getting lighter, and springing upward along a fault. I call it the “bedspring effect”, kind of the mattress shaking when you have been sitting on the edge of the bed and then get up.
I was in a 7.5 in Mexico City in 1957. The city is underlaid with deep mud and the shaking was quiet and steady like standing up in a fast moving subway train. It was 1:30 in the morning coming home from a party. First I thought, “but I only had 2 drinks”, then my date, from California, yelled “earthquake”. We ran for the center of the intersection and held on to each other as the light poles swayed and the ground rocked for more than a minute. It killed almost 200 people. Many buildings that did not collapse had major structural cracks, and had to be torn down, so even if there are Chinese pictures that don’t look so bad, there may be serious irremediable damage.