I live in New England, and area that usually has very few earthquakes. There have been a few small ones recently, and I have never felt the ground moving-but in all occasions, I have heard a sound. it is like a freight train going by, or a big truck.
My question: what generates the sound that we hear? Does the moving earth make stuff resonate?
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Mostly it’s things moving - building components, the windows, things on shelves, thing on the walls. Small earthquakes tend to be short sharp shocks, and create a sort of whip-crack motion in buildings, which makes everything vibrate for awhile. New England probably does not build for large earthquakes, so you’re getting a lot more movement out of a little tremor than we would here in California.
I suppose that we could debate this question, (in light of the cantankerous, contentious nature of many posters, here), but this is really more of a General Question with an actual answer.
Off to GQ.
There’s more to it than that. I used to live in Eastern Canada and the few earthquakes we did have were noisy. Sometimes, you only heard a noise and felt no tremor. I once rushed out of the house because I heard a car crash behind our house – there was nothing; it was an earthquake. Here, in Japan, we get many earthquakes of all possible magnitudes and I’ve yet to hear the same kinds of sounds. Lots of rattling and creaking but no loud or violent noise, unless something’s blowing up.
These loud sounds are known as earthquake booms. It appears that they’re not well understood, but it looks like they’re associated with hard soils like granite. Here’s another relevant story.
I live in southern California, and we have quite a few earthquakes. I have definitely heard something. Everyone in my family has. The sounds do not seem to be coming from the house. They might be coming from big oak trees nearby the house. They seem to be coming from underground. (And from the south-west. There’s a very large hill over there. My personal crackpot theory is that it is the flexing of underground rock shelves.)
My contacts at Cal-Tech insist that earthquakes do not make sounds.
There would appear to be lots of room for future scientific study!
Some earth quakes make a buzzing or humming sound, some a boom, some an undescribable noise that I am not sure I actually heard or not.
Everything is moving, if even only a little bit. All that stuff moving creates low frequency sound waves. I’ve heard plenty of earthquakes in California, and the freight train sound is usually the whole structure moving a bit. I’ve never heard it outside, but since everything is moving, I’d expect it to be a bit noisy.
I’ve been through two major earthquakes, and both times it was just holy fuck, I’m gonna die, jump outta bed, stand under a doorway (did not actually happen in first earthquake, as I was paralyzed with fear). I did not hear any preliminary sounds, only the sounds of crap crashing down around me. Once the ground stops shaking you start wandering around and checking the damage.
I’ve been in a couple of moderate ones while outdoors and away from any man-made objects, and there was still a very distinct, very audible noise. It sounded like a truck passing through where we were, and was noticeable before the shaking was.
It was probably the sound of the ground moving and grinding beneath us.
During the big east coast earthquake of a couple years ago I was standing in my living room in a house about 30 miles north of the epicenter. It sounded like the house was sitting on a big bass speaker, vibrating. It went on for quite awhile.
I have also heard booms and other thumps associated with small earthquakes in Maryland.
Indeed I remember awakening from a dead sleep before the audible sound of a small earthquake hit the house around 4 in the morning once. No doubt there was a subaudible cue that the ancient lizard part of my being noted and awoke me prior to the noisy event happening.
Thanks-fascinating stories. I wonder if small earthquakes are the source of the other unexplained earth noises…like the Moodus (CT) noises, or the “Taos Hum” (NM).
the world is a strange place.
I’ve been close the the epicenter of an East Coast USA earthquake, and it sounded like underground thunder. Only it didn’t stop, it just kept getting louder and the building started shaking. I assumed what I heard was the underground rock vibrating.
In the 9.2 in Anchorage, we definitely heard it coming, but that was likely because earth and homes were sluffing off from Turnagain bluff and into the ocean. It sounded like a low frequency rumble before the P-waves hit us. The only noise I heard during the S-waves was everyone screaming, glass shattering, and the squeal of rubber from the parked cars.
More recently, when I was working in an office building in Anchorage that was on the east side of the city near the mountains, I used to hear loud booms (sort of a BOOM-boom, like the second one was an echo) just before the building would start to shake. These were mild earthquakes, but contrary to the linked article above, we could definitely feel them.