Tuesday was a bad day to be in the Western Pacific. Two major earthquakes. Four tropical cyclones. Tsunamis. All on the same day. Sure, September is the height of tropical storm season. But earthquakes have nothing to do with tropical storms.

Or do they? I don’t know much about meteorology or geology. But one of the things I do know is that tsunamis are caused by earthquakes on the ocean floor. So the tsunami-earthquake combination seems to make sense.

There could also be a link between the two earthquakes. Geology 101: The earth’s surface is made up of big plates that are constantly moving and rubbing up against each other. The 8.0 quake in Samoa followed by the 7.6 in Indonesia apparently occurred at the opposite end of the same tectonic plate, the Australian plate. So the Samoan quake might have triggered the Indonesian quake.

What I have no idea about is how the tropical cyclones tie in to all this seismic activity. These storms are the result not of tectonic activity but conditions in the earth’s atmosphere. So it could be that the fact that four cyclones occurred on the same day as two earthquakes and tsunamis is just a coincidence.

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