This one’ll have you quaking.
Scientists have little explanation for a booming phenomenon that’s terrifyingly rocking the globe — though they have been noted as ominous preludes to earthquakes.
Episodes of so-called skyquakes, the bizarre exploding sound more mysterious and creepy than thunder, have been recorded as far away as India and Japan, along with many incidents stateside — going back centuries.
Over and over again, they’ve been heard where storms aren’t present.
Two Colorado hikers recorded a daylight episode on video, shortly before seismic activity occurred in 2011.
Closer to home in New York, the act of nature is sometimes referred to as the “Seneca Guns” in the Finger Lakes region. Famed author James Fenimore Cooper described the freak incidents as “deep, hollow, distant and imposing” in his 1850 short story “The Lake Gun.”
“The lake seems to be speaking to the surrounding hills, which send back the echoes of its voice in accurate reply.”
In the 1800s in seismically susceptible New Madrid, Missouri, similar “artillery” sounds preceded earthquakes — a strange occurrence repeatedly reported across the country for much of the century, according to the US Geological Survey.
But experts don’t need to dive back hundreds of years to find other prominent examples.
“In 2001, a swarm of small earthquakes accompanied by booming sounds unnerved the city of Spokane,” the USGS reported as well.
North Carolina has been another popular location for so-called skyquakes, as one video of the strange noises circulated in 2014.
In 2017, the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama was also dumbfounded by a “loud boom heard.”
“We do not see anything indicating large fire/smoke on radar or satellite; nothing on USGS indicating an earthquake,” the NWS posted to X at the time.
“We don’t have an answer, and can only hypothesize with you.”
Cooper noted in the 19th century that “no satisfactory theory has ever been broached to explain these noises.”
Over a century later, an unsatisfying amount of clarity has been reached on the subject.
“Many of the ‘boom stories’ remain a mystery,” according to the USGS, which noted some have explicable reasons.
“We can deduce from observations and measurements in West Coast locations that at least some of the East Coast booms are associated with very small earthquakes,” the government agency wrote.
“Small shallow earthquakes sometimes produce rumbling sounds or booms that can be heard by people who are very close to them.”
Such is the case of East Hampton, Connecticut where “Moodus Noises” or similar booms have startled residents with intense shaking for hundreds of years.
The USGS added that the East Coast and Northeast specifically have the highest volume of reports.
Scientists in 2020 attempted to find an answer to the strange skyquakes and their affiliation with the shaking Earth.
“Generally speaking, we believe this is an atmospheric phenomenon — we don’t think it’s coming from seismic activity,” researcher Eli Bird told Live Science at the time. “We’re assuming it’s propagating through the atmosphere rather than the ground.”