Yet their cracks and booms offer a stark reminder of winter’s power. Unlike earthquakes, frost quakes are not potentially deadly-though they might shake your house and rattle your dishes, they won’t destroy buildings. The resulting release of energy cracks the earth and causes an explosive “boom!”įrost quakes typically occur at night, when the temperature drop is most severe. When the pressure becomes too much, the ground suddenly breaks under the stress. Hoosiers across the state experienced one in 2021, when a 3.8 magnitude earthquake near Montezuma caused shakes that could be felt from Muncie to Mishawaka. As the groundwater freezes, it expands, pushing and stressing and straining the nearby rock and soil. Like a cork that stops up fizzy champagne, the ice entraps the freezing groundwater below. The 'frost quake' weather phenomenon occurs when the ground is saturated with water or ice. A crust of ice forms at the soil’s surface. Cryoseisms, also known as 'frost quakes' or 'ice quakes,' may have been the reason loud booms and banging sounds were reported in the Chicago area, where brutally cold, below-zero wind chills have taken over. Then, the temperature drops quickly to sub-zero. The key ingredient? As their name implies, the catalyst of a frost quake is cold-sudden, bone-chilling cold.įirst, water saturates the ground, perhaps from the melt of a recent snowfall. Instead, frost quakes start with a simple mixture of water and ground. There are no tectonic plates, fault lines, or volcanoes involved. Unlike earthquakes, however, they are not true tectonic events. Like an earthquake, a frost quake causes the ground to jolt and shake, producing seismic waves and even splitting stone. reports from Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Vermont and Maine. (KSNT) The StormTrack Weather Team at Nexstar’s KSNT created a graphic to help explain the process that causes these frost quakes. In scientific terms, you’ve just experienced a cryoseism. (searching for the terms ice quake and frostquake on Wikipedia are redirected. Whoa! Was that an earthquake? An explosion from a mining accident? Maybe the apocalypse? If you felt something shaking in central Indiana Thursday afternoon, no, it wasnt all the summer construction. They are mostly observed during the coldest parts of the night, right around the pre-dawn hours.In the stillness of a chilly winter’s night, a “boom” echoes through the air, and a crack gashes the ground at your feet. Explore: Forestparkgolfcourse is a website that writes about many topics of interest to you, its a blog that shares knowledge and insights useful to everyone in many fields. with Michigan, as well as southern Indiana and western Ohio. While it hasn’t been cold long enough for a deep soil freeze a few feet in the ground, certainly with the amount of saturation that occurred could have lead to some of these smaller “frost quake” scenarios on a smaller scale.įrost quakes are not commonly reported with damage or injuries. Frost quakes, also known as cryoseisms, are a natural phenomenon that occurs when. That’s plenty cold enough for a “flash freeze”, meaning all of that previously mentioned moisture froze quickly. However, an ice quake leaves them stranded high above Earths floor, left to. Overnight lows from Saturday night to Sunday morning fell to the single digits in and around Delaware County. A wedding party takes to the Alps for a beautiful day of sky-scraping adventure. The second ingredient would be extreme could. Bidding: Our on-line auctions move quickly If you are interested in an. Add to that some of the sleet, freezing rain and rain this past Saturday, and that leads to a very saturated ground. Any debt collection or dispute proceedings will be heard in Harrison County, Indiana. Much of that melted through the week, so there was plenty of moisture in the ground. All promotional dates subject to change, as the Quakes continue to plan promotions to be added in the future. Remember, Muncie reported over 8″ of snow from the Jan. While there were no extreme temperatures swings from the end of the week into the weekend, we did have two things that could have led to some of these minor frost quakes. Many of our reports came out of Delaware county and surrounding areas over the weekend. While there isn’t hard evidence, there is a decent possibility that these noises were called by a phenomenon called cryoseisms, also known as “frost quakes.”Īccording to, a frost quake is “a natural phenomenon that occurs when extremely cold temperatures lead to sudden deep freezing of the ground, after it has been saturated with water.” When this occurs, the sudden freeze will cause underground ice to expand, causing soil and rock to crack, which will produce these “booms”, and in more extreme cases, shakes. INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Several WISH-TV viewers reached out over the weekend over concerns of what they called loud “pops” or “booms” Saturday night and early Sunday morning.
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