Just when we thought we had a complete answer for what recently caused a great big “boom” heard and felt by many in our area, a new perspective on what happened around 9am on Tues. Dec.9th has come to light.
After discovering a large amount of social media posts wondering and speculating on what took place, I got to the bottom of things and traced the “boom” to a local construction company doing some blasting. Read more about that here
It turns out that there is likely more to this mysterious event!
I have received a text from a loyal listener saying….
“Johnathan, I live on Idylwild Drive. That boom was an ice heave on the lake. It was very small heave and then after the boom there was at least an extra foot of ice up in the air. I do not know how long it runs but at least to the RendezVous and as far as I could see in the other direction. So it was a major amount of ice that jumped up in the air. We’ve never had a heave right in front of our house that we could remember. That would go back 35+ years. It was strange because it sounded like our neighbour, who happened to unloading a truck of buildup materials at the time, had maybe dropped a really huge piece of machinery. But there was nothing on their truck that could have made that much noise. We checked right after that, and the ice had definitely moved.”
Ice heaves occur when water in the ground (or in this case on on frozen lake) quickly freezes, expands, and then cracks the surrounding soil, rock, or (again in this case) the ice sheet itself, releasing pressure with an explosive sound.
The sound is often described in various ways by witnesses:
A gunshot or a series of loud bangs.
A loud, distant explosion, sometimes being mistaken for a transformer blowing or an airplane crash.
A loud crack, bang, or rumbling noise.
For ice on lakes in particular, the expansion and contraction can even create eerie sounds that are often described as roaring, growling, or even sounding like laser beams
So maybe this Tuesday morning 9am Boom was actually the result of multiple different things happening around the same time.
Blasting, Ice Heaving, who knows what else?
