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General discussion

High Winds, Booms?, and 5 Degrees in Maryland

Feb 14, 2015 8:35PM PST

All night long, constant steady roar of wind over 30 mph but were gusts up to 50 mph. Constant roaring now for almost 12 hours. What are the booms?! Regular boom sounds. Like muffled sonic booms you can hear from a jet overheat, or distant fireworks. My electric is on, so not exploding transformers, I hope. I wonder if it's lightning due to static charges from the dry high winds, but muffled by the winds? Just saw Owings Mills is now at ZERO degrees. I'll be skipping church today. There's 3-4 inches of caked up, wet then frozen snow on everything. Wind chill is in the minus degrees, so not cleaing the van till at least the winds die down. The eerie sound of the wind all night long has been amazing. Almost like having a hurricane go by, but for a longer time.

Discussion is locked

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Currently 0 degrees here in central Ohio
Feb 14, 2015 9:17PM PST

We've had strange booms that were called frost quakes. I've even seen where concrete curbing has been shattered when saturated with water that freezes.

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I'd never heard of that before
Feb 14, 2015 11:03PM PST

Makes sense, but these sounds were from "up there". Of course earthquakes can put sound into the air too. It was really odd. I've heard continual high winds before, both from hurrican and blizzard, but never noticed muffled "booms" before this. I thought maybe transformers exploding somewhere, but after a few of them and still electricity was on, I figured it must be something else.

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Transformer noise
Feb 15, 2015 1:37AM PST

Sometimes a local interrupter on the pole pops open and arcs with a loud bang. The transformer is OK but, in my area, it's often that a squirrel has just committed suicide. It can even happen during severe electrical overloads on the hottest summer or coldest winter days. If you've got a lot of all electric homes or those with heat pumps backed up by resistance heat, I expect you could be hearing the breakers pop.

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Frost quakes
Feb 15, 2015 5:38PM PST

It looks like Ohio gets these but not Maryland. We've had them after periods of rain where the ground saturates well and the temperature plummets to near zero. They can sound like your foundation just cracked or a bowling ball just struck the side of the house. It won't roll like thunder but it will make you get up in the middle of the night to inspect for damage. We did have rain and a very quick freeze but I've heard no cracking. Thundersnow we'll tend to get with warmer temperatures either in early or later winter when fronts of different temperatures collide.

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I've heard that trees in arctic conditions
Feb 17, 2015 8:48AM PST

will explode when the water in the sap freezes.
BTW in the 60s here with plenty of sunshine.
Happy

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they will crack
Feb 17, 2015 12:42PM PST

from freezing the water still contained in the dormant trees. We had that happen here some years ago when we had single digits following a fairly wet fall. I'll try to remember in daylight to take a picture of my largest oak tree which split, but over some years grew new bark over the crack, but leaving a straight line down it's side.

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I have some variety of sugar maple in the back
Feb 17, 2015 5:36PM PST

This winter, it's been seeping from a few wounds on the more horizontal branches when it warms a little. Then, when a hard freeze occurs, the seeping has been creating icicles up to about a foot long. I've seen squirrels lapping at these and even breaking them off to try and chew on. Looking this up, I see it to be fairly common but this is the first I've seen of it. They're called "maplesicles" or "sapsicles" and are considered to be an early sign of Spring.

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You should collect them
Feb 18, 2015 2:35AM PST

I have crabapples in the front and nothing eats them till they've gone through a freeze, then the birds, usually starlings come in a flock and clean them off the trees. Seems they like their tart crabapples mushy instead of crunchy.

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Had our crab removed years ago.
Feb 18, 2015 2:56AM PST

Yep...apple sauce under it after a freeze. We'd track it into the house but I did get starling help the same as you. Starlings will eat just about anything. I'll not forget one morning years ago when I looked out in the street in front of the house. Someone had lost their cookies overnight in the middle of the road. The starlings came and gobbled it up...gone within minutes and the birds still looking for more.

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Good morning
Feb 15, 2015 12:32AM PST

I really enjoyed my "hot coffee" this morning. I guess you're feeling the chill as well. I got up after sleeping like a babe in my cozy abode. Now, understand, i dragged-in wood for the fireplace to last, but over the night went through alot of it. Of course, i started one this morning and overall, I LIKE it. It's level 2 in my area now and overall I don't see that much traffic on the roads outside. What i did see last night is the blinking salt trucks keeping the road clear, back and forth through my window. The TV broadcast the many "closing/cancels" of events or such which makes sense, its bad out there. Well, i guess its time to pull-on the woollies and trek outside for more wood. It's a good thing I like a state with "seasons". ------Willy Happy

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Not to worry
Feb 15, 2015 12:44AM PST

Two more weeks until spring Cool
Digger

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Not what "Phil" said.
Feb 15, 2015 1:47AM PST

Dafydd.

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Aww Heck
Feb 16, 2015 7:26AM PST

I looked at the calender wrong , so another month or so , but look at the bright side.
Maybe the snow will stay on the East Coast.

Digger

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You might be right
Feb 15, 2015 2:31AM PST
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(NT) It's called thunder snow. Fairly rare.
Feb 15, 2015 10:07AM PST
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that must have been it
Feb 15, 2015 3:39PM PST

we did get some snow and it sounded like muffled thunder. There were a lot of them.

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Watch weatherman lose his mind
Feb 16, 2015 12:40AM PST