Quake Watch 2011

reply to post by summer5


I think first of all any noise that goes on as long as 20 minutes is probably not an earthquake. An earthquake lasts but a few seconds or in extreme case a minute or two. They certainly never last 20 minutes.

I am not saying these are not earthquake related, just that what you are hearing is not the P wave of a quake, or related to the P wave.

In many many ways I wish I could hear this sound. i don't mean on a recording, I mean to be in it to feel it around me. I am very susceptible to low frequency sound and I am sure If I could hear/feel it I could get an idea of what it may be.

Unfortunately here in peaceful rural Ireland it is a quiet as a church. Last night nary a thing was stirring, not even a mouse! Actually there was a little wind but sometimes it is so quiet you can feel it. Or should that be not feel it - a bit like sensory deprivation. Dark night, no sound. Love it! If it is misty you sometimes cannot see someone on the path just 2 feet away from you.

reply to post by MoorfNZ

Many thanks for the reply. Yes, you followed my "pirate talk" post pretty well I was asking about the latest quake you reported experiencing and if you'd heard the rumbling or booming sounds immediately preceding it.

What you said about hearing the sounds and then no quake occurs that you can feel matches almost exactly with what Dr Hill said in that report I linked to, where he states:

While on the flank of Mammoth Mountain with Bill Ellsworth one day during the 1989 Mammoth Mountain earthquake swarm, we both heard muffled booming sounds but felt no shaking. On checking, we found that the earthquakes during that period were shallow (< 4 km deep) with magnitudes M < 2.0. This may explain reports by people living on the flanks of restless volcanoes of ominous booming sounds that both feed local legends and serve as an early warning of a possible impending eruption.

(Bolding mine.)
SOURCE

Interesting how in his case, he connects it to volcanic activity. I mean, it's natural that he did, considering the location, but it's something to consider when we get similar "booming sound" reports from people who live in regions that are not supposed to be volcanic.

Just by the way (for anyone who's curious), Dr Hill's credentials are quite impressive. Here's an extract from his short bio that can be found here on the USGS website:

Dave Hill is a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA. He has served as Scientist-in-Charge of the Long Valley Observatory from 1982 to April 2009, Chief of the Seismology Branch from 1978-1982, and as Staff Seismologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory from 1964-1966.

His own comments about his areas of interest are also worth noting:

Much of my research has focused on processes driving unrest in large, silicic calderas with particular emphasis on Long Valley Caldera in eastern California. My approach is that of a seismologist interested in regional tectonic-magmatic interactions, seismotectonics, crustal structure, earthquake source mechanisms, and seismic wave propagation. A closely related interest involves an effort to understand remote triggering of seismicity (including “non-volcanic” tremor) and volcanic unrest by dynamic stresses in the form of seismic waves from large, distant earthquakes. Remote triggering is a promissing tool for probing the physical state of crustal volumes that have reached some form of criticality.

(Source as linked above.)

Just speaking personally, this fascinates me because of my own interest in aspects of remote triggering.

His longer bio here includes a long reference list of published articles. (Scroll down a bit if you looked at the short one as the first part is the same.) Worth a look. Be nice to get a copy of the most recent one that relates to hydraulic fracturing. ("Fracking".)

Best regards all,

Mike

reply to post by PuterMan

Puterman,

what if it's a series of (say) microtremors, occuring in rapid succession? We know that these tremors produce rumblings (and they have been reported in by locals Western Bohemia during the quakes swarms there). So okay, not one quake producing 20 minutes of rumbling, but perhaps many?

In other words, a possible swarm?

I'm not asserting anything in respect of Summer5's case, mind you. Just putting the idea out there for consideration.

Mike

Originally posted by PuterMan
reply to post by summer5

 

I think first of all any noise that goes on as long as 20 minutes is probably not an earthquake. An earthquake lasts but a few seconds or in extreme case a minute or two. They certainly never last 20 minutes.

I am not saying these are not earthquake related, just that what you are hearing is not the P wave of a quake, or related to the P wave.

In many many ways I wish I could hear this sound. i don't mean on a recording, I mean to be in it to feel it around me. I am very susceptible to low frequency sound and I am sure If I could hear/feel it I could get an idea of what it may be.

Hey PM! Thanks for the reply. I wasn't implying that the noise, I was hearing the past few nights, was due to an earthquake in progress. It is such a strange "vibration" sound. It's VERY low frequency sound (and feeling) - it is very eerie. I wish I could get an idea of what it "might" be.

I live rural VA, in the mountains. It's very quiet here. Sounds much like where you are. I don't have any factories, or city type noises that it "could" be. I have very few neighbors, spread quite far apart. So when I hear some strange noise, such as the one I have been hearing, I am very in tune to it. Just wish I knew what "it" was

reply to post by JustMike


Great question!

reply to post by MoorfNZ

The plains are gravel, if that makes a difference to the way sound is generated etc.

I would say that was a yes.

The rumble we hear (it's very very distinguishable from any other potential noise, sounds like nothing on earth) is very very low resonance, you can almost 'feel' it as well as hear it. It is eerie. It's strange because it's so low you feel you ought not to be able to hear it, yet it's very audible (if that makes sense) yet it's not LOUD... but all around you.

In relation to the paragraph below about the sharp ones, are these always subsequently traceable to a smaller quake?

The LOUD noises, more like jets, arrive with the movement. Particularly the 7.1 (about 12km from me) which when it hit sounded like several large jumbo jets landing in the garden, and continued for a good 40 secs with the movement.

I would imagine that the sounds that arrive with the shaking at resultant upon the rending/movement of the ground and not with the P waves.

Sometimes booming will be heard with NO movement. This type of boom is different - short and sharp like an explosion. I've experienced this too, as have many I know. These are weird ones because you brace yourself but nothing comes. I've noticed these are often v. shallow and close by and small quakes (sub 2.5). This was the case the day before the 7.1 where residents near the epicentre (which is also fairly need a small Army shooting/bomb practice range) had rung the Police after hearing booming to check it was the range. It wasn't. Next day the 7.1 hit.

The proximity may be a clue here. I am thinking speed of the seismic waves. These are belting out from the hypocentre at huge rates - up to 11km a second. That is supersonic, hell no it is even way above hypersonic.

I am not the best at maths so someone please haul me up if am an in error here.

Seismic waves:

The propagation velocity of the waves depends on density and elasticity of the medium. Velocity tends to increase with depth, and ranges from approximately 2 to 8 km/s in the Earth's crust up to 13 km/s in the deep mantle.

That is per second please note. Even the slowest at 2km/second is 7,200 km/hr. The 11 km/s ones are 39,600 km an hour

39,600 Kilometers per Hour = 24,606.23 Miles per Hour. That is truly hypersonic and faster than escape velocity or re-entry speeds. I make that Mach 32

Yes, Mach 32!

There must be barrel loads of vibrations coming off that and yes this is undoubtedly where topography plays a part. Any formation that acts as say a venturi on these frequencies would speed them up - I am hypothesising here - and probably raise them into audible levels. (Rock formations do deflect seismic waves even though they can travel through them). Most people can hear 100 Hz, not many hear below that. But you can feel vibrations down as low as 14 Hz - the one which can kill you if sustained. I have sat and watch a bass speaker playing 17 Hz as an experiment in science at school. Oh yes you really could feel it. (I think it was the same teacher that allowed us to make TNT and gunpowder! Who says school was not fun?)

But I am still curious as to why this seems to be recent so await input from StealthyKat. Perhaps with more info we can figure this thing out.

reply to post by JustMike


See my reply to MoorfNZ

I think that may cover it.

reply to post by PuterMan


Here are two different sounds (being reported all over the world - not always followed by a significant quake). Here are two video's I found this morning regarding the quake in CO, and the following day in VA. Both were heard prior to the quakes.

Here is the one in VA:



And the one in CO.



What say you PM?

reply to post by summer5


They are both so very different. The second I could relate to as being of earthquake origin - and I would not be standing below that rock pile - but the first one? Don't know.

Must be HAARP

I am also very curious as to why the person filming cut it off. Would you? I know I would not.

I am going to get the sounds off these and see what comes up in analysis.

reply to post by PuterMan




Yeah, I honestly didn't think about where they were standing while recording that sound

And yes, the noises are very different. Both those same noises have been heard around the word - some with quakes following, some not.

reply to post by PuterMan

I am going to get the sounds off these and see what comes up in analysis.

OH COOL! You ROCK!

reply to post by summer5


Not much these days I don't!!

OK the 'whoosh' noise for want of a better description is very much higher in the frequencies than the bangs. It starts a 172 Hz. but goes right up to 4000 Hz. The bands of frequency come down fairly rapidly in harmonic divisions (roughly) down to 172. The slice I analysed was right in the middle of the sound covering about 2.5 seconds. If you have hear gas coming out of a round pipe that is what it sounded like to me. The other curious thing is that there is an almost continuous narrow band of signal exactly centred on 3000Hz

The bangs are very different. VERY sharp completely flat front wave like a nearby rifle shot. Frequency range of this one is 43Hz to 131 Hz. If I slow it down by 4 times it sounds exactly like the seismos speeded up. Even the double bump so common in the earthquake sounds is there.

ETA: By the way slowing the whoosh it still sounds like gas coming out of a pipe.

reply to post by PuterMan


Well that sounds interesting!

Could you further explain, to a dummy like me, what the ranges mean?

No earthquakes for a few hours now. But look at PuterMan's Virginia seismo! Something is up!!!

reply to post by PuterMan


Puterman....I am really busy trying to compile a list for Doodle, but I saw this and wanted to reply. While doing research on this, I am finding reports from years ago that I never knew about. It's really getting interesting! I can't wait until Doodle and I get the map done....

reply to post by PuterMan


Oh....one more thing...I just posted a bunch of recordings from literally around the world on my thread if you want to analyse or just hear on this page www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by StealthyKat


I am also looking forward to this. If nothing else at least we will have a basic log.

reply to post by summer5


Yes it does sound rather interesting and no basically because this dummy has no idea!

The frequencies of the second sound I am guessing are possible generated by something siesmic as slowed down thaey are very similar and the waveform looks like a local earthquake does on the seismograms. If you saw that on a seismo you would say "Oh look as series of small local earthquakes".

Now if someone just showed me the plot of the second one, with no sound, I would say that it 'looks' like solar or other interference does - until I look at the frequencies which are way higher. One would need to know how long that sound went on for and was it directional, and precisely where it was. Just because it is VA and happened to be before the earthquake does not make it connected, not without much more info that we will not get.

The second one, if accompanied by chopper noise would be be easy to point at and say - someone shooting from a chopper at wolves.

Inn fact having removed any lower ranges from it and amplified it mega times to pick up what is left - we have a rifle shot.

dl.dropbox.com...

Zipped becuse of T & C

ETA: Notice how the sound comes towards the camera and then fades away? Even more noticeable when you strip out any low sounds.

reply to post by wasobservingquietly


Looks normal to me. I would not be worrying about that - interference

Nothing to see, move along

reply to post by PuterMan


Know anything about this? From a few minutes ago.. www.abovetopsecret.com...&flagit=754889