The short answer is probably not, but it's complicated and any potential effects depend a lot on the details (i.e., where is the water, how much water, which faults, etc). We might expect some change in the statistics of microseismicity, but the likelihood that this would influence details of large magnitude earthquake is low.

For the longer answer, we need to establish that changes in surface loads from water (either rain or snow) and changes in the amount of water in the shallow subsurface (i.e., groundwater) can have an influence on earthquake statistics and details. There's not a single mechanism at play here though, so things get a bit messy. Some of the culprits at play are changes in: (1) primarily vertical normal stress magnitude from changes in surface water mass, (2) changes in strain rate from longer wavelength elastic responses to changes in water mass, and (3) various "poroelastic" effects that relate to more or less water within pore spaces at various levels within the upper crust.

The easiest one to wrap our heads around are the first, i.e., changes in normal stress. Basically if you have a shallowly angled fault, putting more weight on it will actually make it less likely to fail because, in a simplistic way, you're increasing the friction. For example, in portions of the Himalaya, there appears to be excess seismicity in the winter, with the idea that large loads imposed by the summer monsoons increase the normal stress on faults making them less likely to fail in the summer (e.g., Bollinger et al., 2007, Panda et al., 2018). Similar things are seen in Taiwan, though the signal is a bit messy (e.g., Hsu et al., 2021). Alternatively, in Japan, the opposite is found with some areas potentially experiencing more earthquakes in summer with the normal stress provided by snow suppressing earthquakes in the winter (e.g., Heki, 2003). Given this, we'd kind of think that heavy rains (i.e., more water mass) would actually decrease the likelihood of earthquakes, but critically, these examples are mostly focused on shallowly angled faults (i.e., shallowly dipping dip-slip faults), whereas in California, most of the faults of concern are close to vertical.

With reference to California, we've recognized that there is seasonal modulation of earthquake statistics (mostly for microseismicity, i.e., small earthquakes) thought to be related to changes in both surface and grounwater mass and related effects, i.e., those long-wavelength elastic and poroelastic ones mentioned above (e.g., Johnson et al., 2017). A variety of follow up work has filled in details (e.g., Kreemer & Zaliapin, 2018, Kim et al., 2020, Carlson et al., 2020), which highlight that the potential earthquake response depends on where the change in the water mass is in relation to specific faults and the type of faults. Heavy precipitation, depending on where it is, can make earthquakes slightly more likely for some faults and less likely for others depending on the details. Also, as discussed in some of the papers, some of these effects can have a significant (several month) time lag. Mostly again, this is considering small earthquakes and changing statistics not total energy release, but there are some indications that some of these water mass related changes could allow for larger earthquakes (e.g., Kreemer & Zaliapan), but this specific suggestion was for when faults in a particular location were experiencing fault normal extension due to an elastic response to less water.

Ultimately, what this suggests is that, especially given the large amounts of both snow and rain, this added water mass will likely influence some aspects of earthquake statistics, but the likelihood that this directly relates to a large earthquake is pretty low. Also, importantly, we don't generally understand these systems well enough to use this information to make useful or actionable forecasts for the details of changes in earthquake statistics we might expect, but I fully expect there will be papers in the coming years considering what effect these storms had on details of crustal strain and impacts of those changes in crustal strain.

Probably not. The water runoff, whether drainage or melt, will flow at a pretty evenly distributed rate. However, if it gets down into a particularly dry aquafer or subterranean reservoir, it might cause shifting in the ground due to saturation, but I doubt anything major would occur. I'd be more concerned about landslides and rockfalls, i.e. the removal of topsoil.

Unlikely. Considering the enormous masses of the Pacific plate and the North American plate, the mass of the water on California is relatively tiny. Simplistically, earthquakes are the release of one plate being crushed into another. I know, the San Andreas is a transform boundary. I lived next to it most of my life in Southern California. It slides about as smoothly as a couple of pieces of coarse sandpaper rubbing together! They’re relatively easy in comparison! Remember Newton’s formula F=ma, where mass is both plates, acceleration is the distance roughly of a fingernail. F is is going to be some insanely huge number—small wonder earthquakes are so bad!

Well.

Perhaps every body should learn to swim.

And then. Let us build giant wind turbines that. Catch and release safely uh. Angry biting fish.

Like. Shoo go away lol idk and some we eat if they are too much idk.

Anyways.

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