Louisiana Sinkhole Grows To Four Acres

Here's the latest.  Breakdown delays drill in sinkhole probe  The Advocate.  Excerpts:

..
The sinkhole was found Aug. 3 in Texas Brine swampland property between the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities south of La. 70 South, prompting the evacuation of residents from about 150 homes in the vicinity. The sinkhole appeared after two months of natural gas releases in area waterways and earth tremors, both of which have continued.


The sinkhole, which has grown larger as dirt and trees on its rim have sloughed off and fallen into the water since it emerged, including this week, is now about 475 feet across and an estimated 4 acres in size, according to new parish dimensions.

The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources ordered the well be drilled after scientists suspected a nearby company salt cavern in the Napoleonville Dome failed, released its brine contents and caused the sinkhole.

John Boudreaux, director of the parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said Friday’s mechanical failure involved a mud pump near the bit at the tip of the drill pipe.

He said the failure forced the entire drill pipe to be removed Friday so the bit and pump could be replaced and reinserted in the drill hole, which has reached 3,180 feet in depth. The bit had reached a point about 300 feet above the cavern roof, Texas Brine officials said.

The videographer recorded two men at the site of the sinkhole.  That's it?  Two guys?  Shouldn't the EPA be studying the fuck out of this thing?  Also:  There's still no coherent crisis response from any of the parties involved.  Anything else you can tell us, other than "Mud pump broke!,"?  Anything?  Anyone?

That's A Nice Sized Sink Hole Ya Got There, Louisiana..

In case you were wondering what happened to that ever-growing sinkhole next to a butane cave;  Well, it's getting bigger.  And it's already affecting a lot of lives..  And nobody knows how to fix it.  Sinkhole grows 400 feet, gas pressure too great for drillers.  Examiner:

..The expanding sinkhole covers part of the massive 1-mile by 3-mile Napoleonville Salt Dome used by oil and gas companies to store and supply hydrocarbons and brine to nearby refineries in the nation's area known as Cancer Alley.


"In the video of the sinkhole site, at approximately 00:35, you can see this growth towards and into the pipeline right of way," officials said in a blog post.

The parish officials' YouTube video of the sinkhole, Sinkhole Site 9.18.12, is "not approved" to embed on this site, and "Comments are disabled for this video" on YouTube. That flyover can be viewed on YouTube

(Here at the link..)
"In the [9.18.12] video of the rig site, you can see that the drilling rig has been dismantled and removed in order to make way for the snubbing rig that will complete the final phase of drilling and entry into the cavern," officials stated in a blog post.

The Louisiana sinkhole, an oil and gas disaster, is impacting security human rights of mandatory evacuees and residents who have remained.

"Meanwhile, back at the sinkhole site, scientists have made another discovery that could keep residents out of their homes for an undetermined amount of time," reports WAFB.

"They got down to 90 feet and experienced gas in the water aquifer and were unable to set water well due to the pressure. We put cement, plug, and got off the site and regrouped to come up with another strategy to set a vent well," explained director for the Assumption Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness John Boudreaux.

Boudreaux said workers must replace the rig from which they have been working, with one that will allow them to vent gas from the well.

The source of the gas is still unknown, according to officials.

The sinkhole that developed on Aug. 3, after two months of over 1000 earthquakes in the vicinity and emerging gas bubbling sites percolating in nearby bayous, prompted parish officials to order a mandatory evacuation of 150 households in the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas. That evacuation order remains in effect.

Boudreaux said residents will not be allowed to return home until the gas is under control, according to WAFB that reports, "If history repeats itself, that could mean sometime next year."

Short answer?  Getting worse!

Louisiana sinkhole saltier the deeper it gets

I have no idea what this means.  At least one conspiritard thinks Assumption Parish is sinking into the Gulf.  I'm sure Roland Emmerich would like that, but probably not.  One way or the other, the hole's still getting bigger..  The Examiner.

The giant Louisiana sinkhole’s water is far saltier the deeper the hole gets, state environmental regulators said Monday.


“Salinity estimates based on water samples taken earlier this month from a large sinkhole in northern Assumption Parish suggest the water becomes far saltier, even more than in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the deeper the hole gets, state environmental regulators said Monday,” reports David Mitchell for The Advocate.

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality officials said those test results are pending might indicate the source of the sinkhole water.

“We should be getting it this week,” Chris Piehler, DEQ Inspection Division administrator said Monday.

The expanding sinkhole is now approximately 427 feet deep, less than 300 feet from the top of Texas Brine's salt cavern that stretches down another 2,800 feet in the Napoleonville Salt Dome. Officials say they expect the sinkhole to continue growing.

It's always something with those Cajuns and their sinking land, right?

Sinkhole Swells; Swallows - Seriously!

Giant Louisiana sinkhole expands to 526-feet and swallows a BOAT (but the two clean-up workers in it were rescued just in time).  Things is not kosher.  Daily Mail. Excerpts:

A ginormous 400-foot deep sinkhole in Louisiana is expanding and today swallowed a boat.


Two clean-up workers who were in the boat had to be rescued before they too disappeared into the watery mass, which today grew by another 50ft, authorities said.

The vessel was tied to a tree on the south west side of the site as the workers cleaned up diesel in the sinkhole.

The piece of land where the tree was standing sunk into the growing pool of water, pulling the boat in with it.


The workers were rescued by air boat and did not suffer any injuries but all clean up operations at the site have now been suspended until further notice due to concerns over safety.
'Early this morning they started the clean up operation of the diesel,' said John Boudreaux, director of Office of Emergency Preparedness for Assumption Parish.

'Two of the workers were in a small John's boat and had a rope skimmer. The boat was tied to trees but that edge slouched and basically the boat started to go in with it. There was an air boat nearby and they were rescued as the trees went in and took the boat in too.'

The gaping hole now measures about 526-feet from northeast to southwest and 640-feet from northwest to southeast.
..
Scientists said at a community meeting last Tuesday the sinkhole might be related to a brine cavern owned by Houston-based Texas Brine Co. contained within an underground salt dome.
It has been reported that local officials at Texas Brine have known since at least January 2011 that there have been problems with the structural integrity of a brine cavern that was plugged in June 2010. Officials did not mention those issues at the meeting.

'It's what I've been saying all along, that they've been hiding things,' Rousseau said. 'I think our local officials are trying to do the best they can, but I think they're being hindered by the higher-ups hiding things.'

Rousseau said he was especially worried after a parish official had him fill out a form asking him to list his next of kin last Thursday morning.

'That's a little disturbing to me. They said it's in case they can't reach us to evacuate. But I mean, come on. They can reach everyone,' he said.

Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, said he wanted more transparency and answers from the Office of Conservation. He said he had no idea about structural issues within the brine cavern until he read about them in the paper.

'There is a serious lack of competence now in the state, and we knew nothing. Nothing. Why did they close the mine? We didn't get any answers. It's a real lack of competence now,' Harrison said.

Hey, Representative Harrison, this is the logical end result of your party's "let corporations regulate themselves" approach.  Hiding potential dangers and obfuscating the actual risks.  Now those abstract dangers have become real and affect your district.  Still feeling the same about gutting the DNR or EPA?

Stuff It Up Your Sinkhole? Sinkhole Shenanigans? Who's NORM?

Even if this sinkhole doesn't hit a nearby butane cave causing a massive explosion, it's already turning into a clusterfuck for the DNR, local authorities, and oil and gas producers.  Turns out, the parish Sheriff's office wasn't told that the sight could be radioactive.  He and his deputies are not amused..

Turns out, Texas Brine and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources have been holding out on the locals for quite some time now..

Officials upset by lack of salt dome info.  Also from The Advocate.  Those gays are all over this story, yeah?

Assumption Parish leaders reacted angrily Thursday to revelations that Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Texas Brine Co. LLC officials had known since January 2011 about possible problems at a salt cavern now suspected as a cause of a large sinkhole in the vicinity of the Napoleonville Dome.


Rep. Karen St. Germain, D-Pierre Part; Sheriff Mike Waguespack; Police Jury President Martin “Marty” Triche; and John Boudreaux, director of the parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said they were “upset” and “disturbed” to learn about those problems not directly from DNR, but in a news account Thursday.

“I’m very disappointed in DNR not being up-front,” Waguespack said.

A joint command has been addressing the sinkhole and earlier natural gas releases and tremors that have plagued Bayou Corne residents for more than two months. In that command, parish officials have met regularly with state officials, including those from DNR, to discuss what may be happening.

The parish officials said they did not know until Thursday that the Texas Brine salt cavern had failed an integrity test in late 2010, a development that may have pointed to the cavern breaching the outer wall of the massive Napoleonville Dome.

The sinkhole itself is also just a little bigger than officially reported..  Details of sinkhole’s dimensions emerge: 250% size of earlier reports — One area so deep it exceeded length of measuring rope, nearby ‘bubbling’ — Official: May be ‘rabbit holes’ or cracks in earth

[...]

More details have also emerged about the sinkhole’s dimensions.
The surface of the sinkhole remains 375 feet across, according to the latest measurements, but, DNR officials confirmed, that diameter means the surface area is closer 2.5 acres, larger than earlier reports.

Also, while measurements of the sinkhole’s depth have reached 422 feet, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality officials said Monday that recent water sampling may point to the hole being far shallower except for a few small areas.

Chris Piehler, DEQ Inspection Division administrator, said most places that a water sampler was dropped for testing recently reached just 50 feet deep. He said that in one small area, he was able to reel out the 300-foot long rope attached to the sampler.
[...]
Piehler said the deeper points may be “rabbit holes” or cracks that reach deeper into the earth than the rest of the sinkhole. He noted that the deepest point was also near where some of the bubbling in the sinkhole is occurring.

NORM.  How much NORM could there be in a one mile by three mile dome, anyway?  More important, even:  How big could the BOOM be?  Possibly Big.  BIG.

Sinkhole: Now 372 feet diameter, Only 1500 feet from butane-filled cavern

At this rate of growth, we're seven or eight days out from intersection.  Authorities don't know what is even happening, much less how to address stopping it.    The Examiner: 

The initially estimated 200 by 200 feet sinkhole that developed late last week, swallowing ancient cypress trees 100 feet tall near Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities in south Louisiana, is now reported to be 380 feet deep with a diameter of 372 feet, filled mainly with salt water with traces of diesel fuel, and only 1,500 feet from a cavern filled with butane, according Tuesday morning news. Analysts' reports further hint that Texas Brine Company's cavern failed, but the butane cavern failing is today's worst-case scenario.


If a nearby butane-filled cavern fails, as it appears the brine cavern did, "it could cause an explosion felt up to two miles away," Fox News 8 reported Tuesday morning. "That's the worst-case scenario."

"All we can tell you right now is we still have bubbling in the bayou and we still don't know what happened and some scientists have pointed out to us that it could go from 200 feet to 2000 feet real quickly. We don't know," said Assumption Parish Sheriff Michael Waguespack on Monday.

After releasing information to the public Monday that the bayou sinkhole is over 380 feet deep, researchers report Tuesday that the diameter of the hole is now 372 feet and has now "swallowed" an acre of the once pristine swampland before oil, gas and salt miners arrived.

Water analysis shows that the water in the sinkhole is comprised mainly of salt water and diesel, both used to stabilize unused salt caverns, officials say.

Some closed salt caverns have diesel fuel at the top as a “pad” to prevent erosion of the salt from the brine, explained John Boudreaux, director of the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Monday's disclosures possibly point to Louisiana Department of Natural Resources officials’ suggestions Friday that the sinkhole was caused by the possibly failed Texas Brine cavern.

“It’s suspect,” Boudreaux said.

Texas Brine company mined deep below the surface for decades but plugged the mine last year by filling it with 20 million barrels of brine, a process that meets the definition of environmental modification, ENMOD.

The company brought geologists from Florida to establish the best way to learn what's going on beneath the surface. Until they know and disclose more about the crisis, homeowners who evacuated might not be able to return, according to Fox News. Residents who did not follow the mandatory evacuation advisory for the area might reconsider. Roughly half of the some 300 people under mandatory evacuation orders remained.

Eventually, sinkholes stop growing.  There is still the possibility that the sinkhole will quit growing before meeting the butane cavern.  That's the best case scenario.  But inertia seems to be indicating otherwise.  More to come..

Clif's New Wujo..

Podcast from Clif High at halfpasthuman.  It's ok-This is a safe link, and the download is free.  53 minutes.  I need to hear it one more time, but Clif's always an interesting listen.

Growth of Earth's core may hint at magnetic reversal

The New Scientist.  Excerpts:

Lopsided growth of the Earth's core could explain why its magnetic field reverses direction every few thousand years. If it happened now, we would be exposed to solar winds capable of knocking out global communications and power grids.



One side of Earth's solid inner core grows slightly while the other half melts. Peter Olson and Renaud Deguen of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, used numerical modelling to establish that the axis of Earth's magnetic field lies in the growing hemisphere – a finding that suggests shifts in the field are connected to growth of the inner core.


There are signs that the next switch may be under way: rapid movements of the field's axis to the east in the last few hundred years may be a precursor to the north and south poles trading places, the researchers speculate.
(..)
"They are suggesting very cautiously that maybe this rapid change is somehow suggestive of us going into a reversal event," he says. "You could imagine if the field were to collapse it would have disastrous consequences for communication systems and power grids."

 
Wouldn't it be nice to know that these types of considerations are taken seriously and given high priority?  That won't happen soon, or maybe ever, so don't hold your breath.  Still, wouldn't it be nice if they were?

Shaking all over: Map of every major earthquake since 1898 reveals stunning image of planet's danger zones

Courtesy The Daily Mail/UK.  I'm not sure, though, what is defined as "major."  I'm guessing magnitude 6.  Impressive map:

If you are looking for somewhere safe from an earthquake, this might help.



For this map shows the where every major quake has struck since 1898, and as you can see, the edge of the Pacific Ocean appears particularly dangerous. In total there are a staggering 203,186 of them, dotted all over the world.
The neon-coloured map was created as a side-project by mapping manager John Nelson, in a case of taking his work home with him, as he works for data-visualisation software maker IDV Solutions.

Go to the link.  This map is bigger, and there's a bonus map of US tornadic activity over the last 61 years.  It's like weather nerd catnip!

Catastrophism proven dominant force in geology once again: Scientists stunned by dramatic change in seafloor in two weeks

File Under:  What we thought we knew; we don't.  The BBC, via The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts:

May 13, 2012 –TONGA – Researchers studying the Monowai volcano, near Tonga, recorded huge changes in height in just two weeks. Lead author Tony Watts of Oxford University told the BBC that the revelation was “a wake-up call that the sea-floor may be more dynamic than we previously thought. I’ve spent my career studying the seabed and have generally thought it pretty stable so it’s stunning to see so much change in such a short space of time.” As many as 32,000 underwater mountains have been identified around the world and the majority are believed to be volcanic in origin. Several thousand of these may be active but a combination of ocean depth and remoteness means that very few have been studied. The team then left the area to carry on with planned research elsewhere but three days later were warned that seismic detectors on the Cook Islands had detected violent activity around the volcano over a five-day period. “If we had been over the volcano during the eruption, rocks could have hit the hull of the ship – that could have been potentially dangerous.” Later the ship returned to the scene and the scientists were surprised to see how much the volcano had changed. In the space of a fortnight, one part of the volcano’s summit had collapsed by as much as 18.8m while new lava flows had raised another area by 79.1m. Most striking was the creation of an entirely new volcanic cone.

Satellite Images Reveal an Ancient Network of Rivers in Arabian Desert

Evidence and Examples of Earth Changes Throughout History.  The Truth Behind The Scenes.  Excerpts:

Satellite images have revealed that a network of ancient rivers once flowed through the sands of the Arabian Desert, leading scientists to believe that the region experienced wetter periods in the past.


The images are the starting point for a major potentially ground-breaking research project led by the University of Oxford into human evolutionary heritage. The research team will look at how long-term climate change affected early humans and animals who settled or passed through and what responses determined whether they were able to survive or died out.


Until now this part of the world has been largely ignored by scholars despite its critical location as a bridge between Africa and Eurasia. In a project funded by the ERC (European Research Council), a multidisciplinary team of researchers will study the effects of environmental change in the Arabian Peninsula over the last two million years. The systematic study of the Pleistocene to Holocene periods will be unique in its length and level of detail.


Over the course of five years the researchers will study the landscape features and excavate sites of likely archaeological interest, using the network of water courses as a map. They will use the latest dating techniques to pinpoint the ages of fossils of animals, plants and different stone tool technologies and compare the similarities and differences displayed in the region’s rock art.


The team’s main focus will be the Arabian Desert, but the work will also cover the wider Peninsula. One key question they will attempt to answer is when the first early modern humans are likely to have first arrived in the Arabian Peninsula from Africa and perhaps surrounding regions. They will also look for evidence that suggests how early modern humans were able to survive, or not, in arid and extreme conditions.


Project leader Professor Michael Petraglia, Co-Director of the Centre for Asian Archaeology at Oxford University’s School of Archaeology, said: ‘From NASA images (above) taken of the Arabian Desert we can see physical landscape features that are visible from space that denote a whole network of former river valleys and lake basins. These lines and dips in the sand provide us with a map of the region upon which we will focus our research activity. The presence of water is an accurate indicator of where early humans and animals migrated to or settled.

Given enough time, a completely, radically different understanding of Earth's physical history will develop.  It's happening now, and when unified, will be awesome.  Not now, but soon.  Tomorrow's Started..

This Week's Volcano To Watch? Mexico City's Popocatapetl

Mexico City on alert as Popocatepetl volcano spews rock and ash  The Telegraph/UK.  Excerpts:

Eruptions from the Popocatepetl volcano began to grow larger a week ago as columns of ash began pouring from more than 60 openings in the 17,886 foot high cone.



On Friday a low pitched roar and rolling towers of ash and steam were spewed out as some of the pressure built up inside the magma chamber escaped.


Glowing rock fragments have also been sighted more than 3,000 feet down the slopes of the volcano.


Mexico's National Disaster Prevention Centre have now raised the volcano alert level to "yellow stage three" – the third highest level.


Incandescent materials, ash and smoke are spewed from the Popocatepetl Volcano (AFP)

Tens of thousands of people live in the farming villages on the volcano's flanks while roughly 25 million people live within a 60 mile radius.


It is feared the airborne ash could cause havoc with Mexico City's busy airport and a large eruption of Popo, as it is commonly known, could see ash falling on Mexico City itself, around 50 miles away. 43 miles southeast, actually.

25 million people within 60 miles.  That's quite a lot of people to evacuate safely and efficiently, provided Popo really pops.  Yes, there have been many false alarms, and right now there's still no reason to expect the worst.  Still, this seems to be the year where everything breaks loose.  When it comes to Everyday Life and Earth Events, past context doesn't really apply anymore.

Meanwhile, worried countenances cast wary glances southeast, many breathing silent prayers, hoping the monster calms down, one more time..  Popocatepetl continues belching smoke, and its intermittent rumbling comforts no one.

Are earthquakes destabilizing tectonic plates across the globe?

From Croatian Times via The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts:

A leading earthquake scientist has warned that the planet could be cracking up after a series of massive quakes in just 48 hours. Expert Gheorghe Marmureanu – from Romania’s National Institute of Earth Physics – says 39 quakes had hit the globe within two days. The series started with two massive quakes in Indonesia measuring 8.6 and 8.2 on the Richter scale rapidly followed by three more only slightly smaller in Mexico within hours.
..
 With the Indonesian quake for example, statistically, there should be one big earthquake in this part of Asia every 500 years. However, since 2004, there were already three quakes with a magnitude of over 8, which is not normal.

Another from The Extinction Protocol..

Moderate 5.5 earthquake and aftershocks rattle southern Greece

A moderate earthquake measuring 5.5 magnitude on the Richter scale jolted southern Pelopponese in Greece on Monday noon, local media cited the Euromediterranean Seismic Institute as saying. The earthquakes were followed by 4.8 and 4.7 aftershocks.

Then there's the strange case of the "Fabiangropen," or "Fabian Pit," Sweden's very scary sinkhole..  If I were a Swedish bird owner living next to this awakening Earth Monster, I'd definitely teach my parrot the phrase "Portal to Hell!  Portal to Hell!"  Anything to mask the horror, you know..   Check out the pictures;  The rising smoke is a nice touch, no?  It's also loud, with tremors lasting up to 45 minutes. 

And just now:  6.5 - Chile..

Paging Patrick Geryl; Telephone call for Patrick Geryl..

The April 11, 2012 Event: cluster of large earthquakes rattle the globe from Indonesia to Mexico

A really significant, tectonically-active day.  More to come?   The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts: 

A strong earthquake hit Mexico on Wednesday, shaking buildings and sending people running out of offices onto the streets of the capital Mexico City. The U.S. Geological Survey said the 6.5 -magnitude quake was centered on Mexico’s Pacific coast near Michoacan and struck fairly deep under the earth at 65 km or 40 miles. Prior to the Mexico earthquake, a powerful and shallow 5.9 struck near the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the coast of Oregon- indicating tectonic plates worldwide are being rattled by planetary seismic tension. Prior to Oregon earthquake, two massive 8.0+ magnitude earthquakes (8.6 and 8.2) struck the ocean floor off the north coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
And:
The Indian Ocean strike-slip fault earthquakes are very unusual. As a matter of fact, I’ve never heard of a strike-slip lateral earthquake of this great a magnitude; especially under water. Preliminary assessment of the Indonesian quakes by U.S. geologists suggests one plate lurched past each other as much as 70 feet. San Andreas is a strike-slip, lateral- can we even imagine two sections of ground moving 70 feet near San Francisco? Had the force of the Sumatra quakes been unleashed upon San Andreas, the city would have been completely destroyed. Ironically, the largest surface displacement ever recorded in a lateral strike-slip fault was 21 feet and that was in the 1906 7.9 San Andreas earthquake. Just so we understand the significance of what transpired today; the Japanese March 11, 2011 earthquake move the ocean floor 79 feet sideways and 10 ft upwards, but today’s earthquakes happened in double 8.0+ magnitude sequence and moved the earth nearly as far. Worst, the seismic tension from the event ricocheted around the world and contributed to other earthquakes.

Late to the party:  Quakes in Utah, the Gulf of Maine, and Gulf of California.  I bet the earthquake sensitives were freaking out these last couple of days..

Another Major Earthquake Again Off The Coast Of Banda Aceh, Sumatra

Magnitude 8.9 - OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA



A tsunami watch is in effect.  This earthquake's saving grace?  The epicenter is over 300 miles off the coast, as opposed to 100 miles like the Boxing Day quake, giving people a chance to head for higher ground..
 
Maybe Timewave Zero isn't bullshit, after all..

Clintonville’s reign of terror from mysterious booms continues

From The Post Crescent via The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts:


Geological officials said Wednesday they are considering putting a seismometer in a Wisconsin city where a small earthquake was recorded last week after strong booms and rumblings shook residents once again. Clintonville police received 65 calls Tuesday night between 10:35 p.m. and 11:40 p.m. and another 19 calls came in between 3:25 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Clintonville Police Chief Terry Lorge said. Several of the booms were heard by officials at City Hall, he said. Residents reported the most recent booming as the worst yet, city administrator Lisa Kuss said.

Interesting that the USGS is considering putting a seismometer in Clintonville..  Again..  You'd think if it registered a quake(albeit small) during an ongoing event of high visibility, they'd have kept that seismo there to determine a pattern.  Huh..

One more from The Extinction Protocol.  Seems like Pennsylvania feels left out.. ‘That noise was not thunder,’ Poconos residents say: Boom violently shakes houses in Pennsylvania  Excerpts: (Plum emphasis EP, red emphasis mine..)

 Strong thunderstorms hit the Poconos Friday night, moving through shortly after 10 p.m. and continuing for at least a half hour, but the weather event that had folks talking was a loud sonic-like boom that shook houses at about 10:15 p.m. Gilda Spiotta of Long Pond said, “The shaking last night lasted unusually long. Didn’t sound like thunder, didn’t feel like thunder, was wondering if something happened on 380/80; tanker accident.” Another Long Pond resident, Lorene R. Allman-Mars: “My son was at the back door letting the dogs out and he reported that he saw a large flash of light fill the sky toward/above the FedEx distribution site on 940, then he heard a loud boom. It didn’t look like lightning; it looked like a bomb blew up in the air. I was on the second floor of the house; I didn’t see anything but I heard the boom and felt it shake the house. I actually felt it under my feet. The floors shook; I have never felt lightning shake the house like that before and we’ve been up here 20 years!” Some readers suggested an earthquake or an explosion, but said that definitely was no routine thunder. Meteorologist and Pocono weather expert Ben Gelber offered this explanation: “One possibility is that thunderstorms in our chilly environment near the surface tonight, associated with an inversion of warm air aloft, sound much louder.” He added, “The sound waves are refracted back to the surface and reverberate in ways that we normally do not experience as they bounce between the surface and the inversion near the base of the clouds."  (Maybe..)

Most conventional plausibility?  Positive lightning.  Those babies manifest some power!  But the unusually long shaking?  Still, maybe..  But prolonged shaking has not accompanied my personal experiences with Positive lightning.. 

I'd like to know how much area was effected by this event, as the booms in Clintonville, WI were initially limited to a 1.5 mile wide area, whereas booms in Montello, WI seemed to be heard by many more people throughout the town.  This "boom" was heard in multiple towns in Pennsylvania.  Is this the same phenomenon, or just coincidental timing?

And finally, back to Wisconsin for exploding tiles and a recoding of a genuine Clintonville Boom.

Enjoy your weekend!

Wisconsin Mystery Booms: The Booms Returneth..

Two from The Truth Behind The Scenes.  Clintonville: Dozens Of Louder Booms Rattle Town Again – March 28, 2012  Excerpts:

The booms have returned in Clintonville, reportedly louder and longer than before.



“Between the times of 10:35 and 10:50 p.m., we received 60 phone calls from residents indicating that they were again hearing very loud, booming, rumbling-type noises,” said Clintonville City Administrator Lisa Kuss.


“Some were indicating that it was even louder than it was last week.”
..
The fact that the booms are continuing to rattle the town will only increase suspicions that the earthquake explanation was merely a cover story for something else. Experts also expressed doubt at the official explanation, with Wisconsin-Madison geophysics professor Clifford Thurber suggesting the booms are originating from only about 100 feet below ground, ruling out the earthquake theory. Speculation as to the true source of the booms has raged. Explanations vary between everything from secret military tunneling to carbon sequestration, which has been known to cause artificial earthquakes in the past. Earthquakes in Wisconsin are extremely rare.
And:
For the same area of the town of Clintonville to be hit by two separate earthquakes in the space of a week is virtually impossible, unless the cause is man-made.

Dozens of plumes erupt – 10 states at the same time, USA – March 26, 2012  Excerpts:

Yesterday, a series of coinciding eruptive events .. dozens of plumes.. all appear / erupt at the same time … 1815 UTC / 215CDT



Dutchsinse report: Viewable throughout the south, midwest, and southwest USA – Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina… possibly more that I did not cover in this video … the chances of having this many wildfires pop up at once sometime right before 215pm CDT – these chances are astronomical if not on the edge of borderline, impossible (imo)..


Be sure to watch the video.  That simultaneous plume is intense.

Wisconsin Mystery Booms: Two More Theories..

Both are possible.


Yellowstone Supervolcano + Strange ‘Rumbles’ in Clintonville Wisconsin Explained  The Truth Behind The Scenes.  Excerpts:


Clintonville Wisconsin — be sure to search the terms … “marathon Wisconsin volcano” … “caldron reservoir” .. and “lake superior volcanic” . The nuclear power plant to the east is called the Kewaunee plant .. all these sites have ONE thing in common… deep earth shafts… pumped or filled full of water…. add in craton/plate pressure and a bit of deep earth magma surge underneath the plate as it gets pushed by the Pacific unrest… and you get underground explosions in Wisconsin near a dormant volcanic site.


..
From Water Dragged Down Into The Earth’s Mantle May Cause Volcanism And Plate Tectonics within the article..


When water is carried into the mantle, the mantle rock undergoes a low-temperature metamorphic process in which it is oxidized and hydrolyzed to form serpentinite, a rock named for its scaly surface.Water plays a completely different role at depth than it does on the surface of the Earth. Water infiltrating the mantle through faults hydrates the mantle rock on either side of the fault.


In a low temperature process called serpentinization, it transforms mantle rock such as the green periodotite into serpentinite, a rock with a dark scaly surface like a serpent’s skin.


As the slab plunges yet deeper, dehydration reactions release water, which at such great pressure and temperature exists as a super critical fluid that can drift through materials like a gas and dissolve them like a fluid. The fluid rises into the overlying mantle where it lowers the melting point of rock and triggers the violent eruptions of magma that created the Mariana Islands, to which Shore was sailing.


“We think that much of the water that goes down at the Mariana trench actually comes back out of the earth into the atmosphere as water vapor when the volcanoes erupt hundreds of miles away,” Wiens says.


The scientists will map the distribution of serpentinite in the subducting plate and overlying mantle, by looking for regions where certain seismic waves travel more slowly than usual.


Or:  Science proves accidentally what the strange noises you been hearing around the globe  Discussion thread from Godlike Productions.   The jist:  Scientists at Los Alamos create a magnetic field two million times stronger than Earth's magnetic field.  The sounds that field makes is similar to the sounds coming from Wisconsin.  The follow up video is not Wisconsin, but his point is made.

This too, could be a partial, or full explanation for the sounds, but what does that mean for our magnetoshpere?  What kind of pressure exerted do these sounds imply?
Also:  From Above, or Below?

Wisconsin Mystery Booms: This Explanation Is Not It, Or, At Least, All Of It..

Wisconsin Town Figures Out Source of Mystery Booms  Newser.  Excerpts:

The mysterious booms heard in Clintonville, Wisconsin, had experts stumped—but there may be a simple explanation. "The mystery is solved. We have experienced an earthquake here in Clintonville,"
..
..explains that the fact that Clintonville's soil and granite isn't like what's normally found under towns suffering earthquakes.
And:
Portable detectors picked up a magnitude 1.5 earthquake—which can only be felt within a 5-mile radius—early Tuesday morning. The devices make their way around the country, and very few are in the state; it was a pure "fluke" that they were in the right place at the right time, adds the city official.


Not that booms don't occur with earthquakes; they do.  But not always, and usually of larger magnitude.  So maybe..  There could be an earthquake swarm in Clintonville.  Have many EQ's does the USGS think happened before the recorded EQ?  Have more sounds/booms occurred?  That equipment would still be there, or was it "Mystery solved:  Let's get the fuck outta here!"  And the seismometers are already gone?

And what of Montello?  The eyewitness reports seem to all point to more intense episodes.  Wouldn't the USGS make the effort to get some seismos just 80 miles to the south west of Clintonville if Montello's shaking harder?  Assuming seismometers are still in Clintonville, how many quakes have they recorded since?  Also, only a small quadrant of Clintonville was effected, opposed to most of Montello.  Also, according to reports from Montello, the boom events overlapped, with Clintonville starting Sunday, and Montello starting Tuesday.  How many quakes have been recorded in Montello?

Tunnels?

Rift Expansion?

Solar-triggered Skyquakes?

Wisconsin Mystery Booms And More: March 23, 2012

Mysterious Sounds And Rumble Now Being Reported In Montello, 80 Miles South of Clintonville – March 21, 2012  Follow up/More background from The Truth Behind The Scenes.   Excerpts:



In Montello, it’s the talk of the town.



Lekas said, “There was a loud boom and all the windows shook. The whole house shook.”


A loud rumble around 5-thirty last night immediately triggered calls to the police department.

Montello Police Chief Richard Olson said, “We have a lot of good, reliable sources that reported this pretty much community wide.”


Jean Dawidziak’s son heard the boom.


She says, “He was out at the farm and said mom there was this big thing, the whole house shook.”

Pretty much everyone we talked to in Montello says they either heard and felt this rumble themselves or they know someone who did. One person even described it like a really bad train wreck, all the cars slamming into each other at once, right where you’re standing.


Olson says, “They reported it almost as if it was under ground or ground level.”


The police chief is still trying to make sense of it.

These booms are much more intense and widespread than those in Clintonville.  And you thought anything with the word "Mystery" or "Mysterious" couldn't get more mysterious..

It's also happening in Oklahoma.  That sound is ominous.  Lots and lots of videos at the link.

Developing..