Mysterious Christmas Eve ‘boom’ heard and felt around GTA

Around 11 p.m. Christmas Eve, people reported hearing a loud “boom” in Toronto, Newmarket, Aurora, Belleville, Richmond Hill, and Sutton. Not only was the boom heard, but it rattled houses, leaving many to believe that a tree had fallen on their rooftop. But so far, there hasn’t been an official explanation.

Even more mysterious is that some people reported hearing booms at other times during the day as well, ranging from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Christmas morning.

The United States Geological Service (USGS) didn’t record any seismic event in Ontario yesterday, and there were no reports to the American Meteor Society.

Mysterious Christmas Eve ‘boom’ heard and felt around GTA

Right now they think it was caused by something called a ...'cryoseism'... Yeah I didn't know what that was either.

Cyroseisms are rare, localized seismic events that occur when a sudden drop in temperature freezes the groundwater, which then expands and cracks the soil and rock. The crack will release a sudden burst of explosive energy, resulting in a loud noise and the shaking of the ground. They usually occur between midnight and dawn.

Being a seismic event you would have thought the USGS would have picked up something???

apparently Cryoseisms are rare... you know rare along with swamp gas and the light of Venus reflecting off the... well you know the sepal..

So whatever it was... looks like we got ourselves a real bona-fide mystery on our hands...

Phew...I thought that maybe news was being reported from "Grand Theft Auto" land...


Cool phenomena though.
Nice thread.

My bad it was my wife cooking, It's does that too me around this time of year! Warning please do not light up too smoke! IF you do you will hear even a bigger boom!

reply to post by Helpus2014


Know what ya mean... both the EPA and the UN Human Rights Council
have gotten together to prevent my wife from cooking...

Don't get me wrong I love her to death but she is a city gal and knows more about microwaving TV dinners than anyone I know... but give her ingredients and a recipe and only someone like chemical ali would be proud...

But back to this Boom...
Damned if I know what it was???

Are we sure it wasn't Santa going supersonic? Or maybe he was shot down crossing the border, and the UPS delivery fail is just a cover story...

Just kidding (mostly...). It's interesting how many weird earth noises and explosions there have been over the last year or two.

reply to post by HardCorps


I live in Pickering, Ontario near Lake Ontario and I heard this sound. Our area got hit particularly hard by an ice storm and we were without power from all day Sunday till Christmas Day at around 8 pm. There was a lot of trees and tree branches falling but this one was different. It sounded like a huge thud like as if a very very large tree (at least a 40' high) had fallen. It was so unusual that me and my dad were asking each other what we thought it was. I even went outside twice after I heard the noise. The first time I went out to see if anything fell on the ground and then I went out again a few minutes later to survey the homes around us to see if any large branches had fallen on peoples roofs. I couldn't find anything at all. It was pretty weird.

reply to post by HardCorps


I'd love for this to be a mystery, but it seems pretty likely that these were actually frost quakes.

They are cryoseisms, also known as frost quakes, and can only be felt close to the body of water from which they originate. Such ice cracks can sometimes be detected by a seismograph if it is located close to the body of water.

Source

That would explain why nothing was registered with the USGS. Temperatures were incredibly low in the area at the time, which means the conditions were right. Cryoseisms are rare, but not unheard of, probably largely due to the localised nature. Unless they occur near seismographs they just don't get recorded.

reply to post by ikonoklast


Allegedly Santa has the speed record over the SR-71.

During the blackout i had a ringing in my ear funny thing is everyone in the apartment claimed to have an ringing in the ear, the other most strange about the storm i saw lighting took some pictures of it. Will be uploading it.

As for the Christmas Booms? i cant say i am not surprised.

reply to post by HardCorps


Maybe the mayor found a new source of crack....?

AFewGoodWomen
Phew...I thought that maybe news was being reported from "Grand Theft Auto" land...


Cool phenomena though.
Nice thread.

edit on 26-12-2013 by AFewGoodWomen because: (no reason given)

Hahah I nearly went on my xbox to make sure my character was safe

We heard this too. We heard a boom around 8pm or a little after 8.

My mother thought that it was a car accident nearby. We dismissed it as ice sliding off the upper roof of the house onto a lower section.

TheStev
reply to post by HardCorps

 

I'd love for this to be a mystery, but it seems pretty likely that these were actually frost quakes.

They are cryoseisms, also known as frost quakes, and can only be felt close to the body of water from which they originate. Such ice cracks can sometimes be detected by a seismograph if it is located close to the body of water.

Source

That would explain why nothing was registered with the USGS. Temperatures were incredibly low in the area at the time, which means the conditions were right. Cryoseisms are rare, but not unheard of, probably largely due to the localised nature. Unless they occur near seismographs they just don't get recorded.

edit on 26-12-2013 by TheStev because: (no reason given)

Well, I just don't believe everything the corporate MSM and/or "government" tells us anymore.

These were reported in many communities around the Toronto area at that time over a very large area, stretching at least 75 miles along the north shore of Lake Ontario and about 50 miles north of it, hardly localized to a small area.

No one around here has ever heard of these before, the "frost quakes" that is, yet temperatures such as these, about -20 Celsius, though cold usually occur at least a couple of times every year in the Toronto area. Yet the term "frost quake" is completely new for everyone. I'm sure its a real term, just surprised that no one has heard of it before, given the conditions it supposedly describe are quite common in most parts of Canada.

I think this WAS a seismic event, a rift event that occurred on one of the many rift faults that lie underneath Lake Ontario, and was covered up by the USGS, as its occurrence would be difficult to explain, which is that it is related to movements of the New Madrid fault system, and were the truth be known, that the whole New Madrid system is probably getting ready to let loose, would cause panic.

The St. Lawrence River is an off-shoot of the New Madrid system, and one of the major bridges that span it, the Champlain Bridge in Montreal, just developed a fatal crack which had officials conducting emergency repairs and immediately planning for a new bridge, which had only been a thought before.

Also, Southern Ontario does have many seismograph stations:

Canadian seismograph locations

reply to post by PlanetXisHERE


I agree with you, planet....there would have been plenty of other examples of this phenomena in the past, if this is what the official version is suppose to be. you and I'm sure many others, express the fact that through many winters, this hasn't occurred. to me, a lame excuse for something else.

AFewGoodWomen
Phew...I thought that maybe news was being reported from "Grand Theft Auto" land...


Cool phenomena though.
Nice thread.

edit on 26-12-2013 by AFewGoodWomen because: (no reason given)

same I was imagining all these online players saying
Player 1 "Geez what was that?"
Player 2 "That hasn't happened before""
Player 3 "I heard it"
Player 2 "it must be the end of the GTA world"

Out of curiosity I went to the American Meteor Society to search for any reports around this time on the 24th. I don't buy their 'frost quake' explanation. Never heard nor felt such a phenomenon and it was not that cold in this region. Bullpucky. The New Madrid theory is plausible, but I think it is more than likely meteors entering our atmosphere.

This report is very detailed of the event in question

Date and Time of sighting is: 2013-12-24 23:30:00 EST (2013-12-25 04:30:00 UTC)

Associated "boom" sound noted long enough after that I think there may have been a second, closer object I didn't observe, and local news reports mention other similar sounds across my local region around that time the same night.

and

Sorry for putting a lot of words in this field, but I want to be clear here, because I think there were multiple fireballs and that I only saw one of them: The fireball was yellowish orange, brighter and larger than any I've seen before ("width"-wise). It didn't look like the typical thin, long, pale, sparse meteors I've seen in seasonal meteor showers. My initial reaction would be to call it a small fireball, like a miniature version of those videos from Russia this year. My location is at approximately 44°5'51"N, 78°17'33"W (Rice Lake, Southern Ontario, Canada), and the meteor was North East of me, about 30 to 40 degrees above the horizon (so, in the top right corner of the Big Dipper's dipper). From my point of view, the meteor was moving mostly "downwards", with east-to-north motion, with the angle to the horizon something between 45 and 80 degrees. It travelled a relatively short distance before burning out: probably about 2 diameters of the moon, maybe a bit more. I viewed this from my parent's front driveway, during the regional black-out from the ice storm, so there was little artificial light. There was no terminal flash, but Here is where this gets interesting: Between 5 and10 minutes later I had gone back into the house and there was a loud boom, and the house frame shook a bit. It was a single boom, sharp, without a rumble following. Our initial thought was tree branch had fallen on our roof, but we found nothing. The boom was also heard by our neighbours, which we learned the next day. Obviously, I wouldn't expect the meteor I had seen to have caused that specific sound, because the time was too long for it to have simply been distance-lagged. However, today I saw a report that other people had heard similar booms across the Toronto area, around the same time that night. I've linked the news story below. We're about 100km east of Toronto. globalnews.ca... So, I thought I would report what I saw, because I'm wondering if the boom I heard was from a second meteor that was much closer to me than the one I saw, and perhaps part of a cluster that had come down over Southern Ontario that night and caused the other reports of similar sounds. I hope this can help in some way. The news report said nothing had been reported, so I wanted to make sure this reached you. Maybe someone will be able to put this together. If so, I'd love to hear how it turns out!

The sonic boom that he heard after he went in the house could have been delayed after the sighting?

reply to post by whatnext21


I agree whatnext that this is another likely explanation, maybe more probable, and easier to cover up if visibility was poor during the event and no one actually saw the meteors that caused the sonic booms. A meteor exploded over Toronto in the middle of the day last year, again an unheard of event that was down-played by the media.



Meteor sonic booms, so common today but extremely rare just a few years ago, or New Madrid related; the most likely true causes, I'm less concerned about the event itself but more curious as to the reasons for the coverup. I guess I'm on the right website - oh wait, some people here think conspiracies are ridiculous, which is their right, but I question their motives for being on here.

Here's what bugs me about the whole frost quake deal....
nothing got picked up on seismograph's...

look, we hear stories about events like a huge gas explosion and the news is quick to report how it was big enough BOOM to be picked up on someone's seismograph...
Seems seismograph are sensitive enough to pick up on those...

but not this one and this happened over a very large area...not confined to say a city block

Now another 'doesn't fit' with a ground event...
Is how many people said they thought maybe a tree fell on their roofs...
"Roof" as in above... as in aerial... as in not underground...

I know that's kind of weak reasoning but given the facts.... this idea of a frost quake doesn't seem to fit...

reply to post by whatnext21


If it was meteors... more than one...
he/they may have heard more than one sonic boom as each of the fragments entered the atmosphere causing multiple booms over a large area...

Maybe it was a small meteor shower with multiple entries spread out over a few hour time span NASA has only mapped out about 1/3rd of the sky after all...

makes a hell of lot more sense to me than does a 'Frost Quake'

We had similar here on the 22nd (southeast Texas). Felt like something slapped the roof of the house. Didn't really shake the house, was more like a limb falling on the roof - a hard fast slap. Nothing was there. Put it on social media and found it was heard for twenty miles north of me and twenty miles south. Still no idea what it was.