{"id":2531,"date":"2014-02-13T08:42:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T14:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/?p=2531"},"modified":"2014-03-25T11:53:05","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T16:53:05","slug":"mississippi-whalesongs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/13\/mississippi-whalesongs\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi Whalesongs"},"content":{"rendered":"

At about 4:00 AM this morning Sarah and I awoke to the songs of a passing pod of whales. Truly, it sounded like distorted whalesongs, or \u00c2\u00a0a family of giants groaning in their sleep, or some 100-foot tall shutters creaking in the wind. We lay there, bemused, wondering what it could be. We didn’t have any good guesses. Our most realistic hypotheses didn’t make much sense: the crane at Macalester creaking in the cold? Distant wolves howling in the suburbs? Turns out, we weren’t the only people awakened by it. Local news sites ran headlines like these:<\/p>\n

Strange howling sound awakens St. Paul<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Whales? Organ music? St. Paul residents try to place eerie early-morning noise<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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MYSTERY HOWL: What caused haunting St. Paul sounds?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Nobody is sure what the sound was, but after eliminating a number of possibilities (including checking to make sure there were no train accidents in the vicinity) the best guess of the Army Corps of Engineers is that it was shifting ice in high winds on the Mississippi.<\/div>\n
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Check it out for yourself (works best at high volume with no other background noise):<\/div>\n