Creepy skyquakes are a booming phenomenon leaving stumped scientists shook: We dont have an answer

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 ...