Mysterious Rattling Booms Expand from Clintonville to Montello, Wisconsin

Mysterious Rattling Booms Expand from Clintonville
to Montello, Wisconsin.

Clintonville hires engineers to find undergound epicenter for booms.

© 2012 by Linda Moulton Howe

 

“Boom reports in Montello have been pretty much community wide.
We’ve checked with our typical sources such as utility companies
and anybody maybe drilling or doing construction in the
area and at this point in time we don’t know what it is.”

– Richard Olson, Police Chief  of Montello, Wisconsin

“Clearly it simply jolts you. It sounds like someone drops a piece
of dynamite outside of the building you’re in. Or that
something sort of exploded under the ground. …We have checked
gas lines, sewers, water pressures and consulted with meteorologists,
seismologists, U. S. military, utilities experts and mining
companies, but have come up empty-handed.”

– Lisa Kuss, City Administrator, Clintonville, WI

Beginning at 5:30 PM Central on Tuesday, March 20, 2012, in Montello, Wisconsin,
about 80 miles southwest of Clintonville, residents called police about loud booms
shaking their houses and rattling windows. University of Wisconsin-Madison Seismologist
Harold Tobin said he was not aware of any seismic readings or reports near Montello.

   
Clintonville, Wisconsin, is a small town of about 4,600 residents 180 miles north of Madison
and west of Lake Michigan. Beginning around 9:30 PM Central on Sunday evening, March 18,
people in northeastern Clintonville reported loud sounds that shook their homes and were
compared to clanging metal and thunder. Monday evening, March 19, Clintonville
police, fire, emergency and utility crews checked manholes for gas leaks and
gas and water lines for leaks, but nothing abnormal was found.

 

March 22, 2012  Clintonville and Montello, Wisconsin – People in northeastern Clintonville, Wisconsin, have been reporting earth-shaking, window-rattling booms since Sunday night, March 18, for three nights into Wednesday, March 21. On Tuesday at 5:30 PM, March 20, no one in Clintonville knew that 80 miles southwest in Montello, Wisconsin, that residents there also called police about a loud, window-rattling boom. “There was a loud boom and all the windows shook. The whole house shook, but no one has an explanation. I was thinking it was an explosion but we had no flames anywhere,” said Patti Lekas. One Montello resident compared the sound to a train wreck right where you are standing and all the cars slam into each other at once.

Montello Police Chief Richard Olson said, “We have a lot of good, reliable sources that reported this pretty much community wide. They reported it almost as if it was under ground or ground level.
We are currently investigating it. We don’t have an answer at this point. We’ve checked with our typical sources such as utility companies and anybody maybe drilling or doing construction in the area and at this point in time we don’t’ know what it is.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison Seismologist Harold Tobin said he was not aware of any seismic readings or reports near Montello.

On Tuesday, March 20, I learned from Clintonville City Administrator Lisa Kuss that as the booms persisted there from Sunday night into Wednesday morning, the locations expanded further south and west from the original phone calls concentrated in northeastern Clintonville.


The northeastern section of Clintonville, Wisconsin, has been the focus of the unexplained
house-rattling booms and clangs that were first reported around 9:30 PM Central on Sunday
evening, March 18, 2012, and extended until at least Wednesday morning, March 21.


Interview:

Lisa Kuss, City Administrator, Clintonville, Wisconsin:  “ People who actually called the Clintonville Police Department started reporting the loud boom sound at 1:45AM Central early morning of Monday, March 19. But other residents said they head the boom sounds as early as 9:30 PM on Sunday, March18, and others thought they had heard the boom sound intermittently over the previous week or two but had not reported the sounds.

So with the police calls at 1:45 AM on Monday, city crews were called in, first because of the popping type noise. We investigated our electrical substation in that northeastern area, but there was nothing out of the ordinary at that location. Then we started to next look internally at our water and sewer systems. We were able to have our local gas company, WE Energie, and then A and R Pipeline representatives and city officials investigate any gas levels that could have been elevated because people were talking about the boom sounding explosive.

COULD YOU ELABORATE ABOUT “POPPING SOUND” AT 1:45AM ON MONDAY MARCH 19TH?

People describe it as something that exploded – that something happened in their basements – and compared the sound to a loud popping and explosive type bang or a series of bang, bang, bang. Nobody really knew that other people were experiencing the same loud boom sounds. People wanted to know about their basement. Or did a vehicle hit my house. Did a tree fall on my house? Was it thunder? It’s a heavy, jolting, jarring, banging type noise that people can feel.

THOSE FIRST CREWS OUT AFTER THE 1:45AM REPORTS TO POLICE OF POPPING AND EXPLODING, WHAT HAPPENED? HOW LONG WERE THE CREWS OUT?

We stayed out all night – my police, fire, public works, and utilities employees were all out together, and we created teams of people so that police, fire, and utility had gas monitoring equipment.  The first night it was clearly to the east side of Main Street, and to the north side of East 12th Street. We walked from one end of the street that was reporting lots of activity all the way to the other end. So it may have been an eight block walk, and they just dropped the monitor into each manhole and detected absolutely no elevated gas levels.

Red lines on North Main Street and East 12th Street mark the region that
Clintonville City Administrator Lisa Kuss and other city authorities and crews
checked gas lines, sewers and water pressures beginning at 1:45 AM on Monday,
March 19, 2012. By early Wednesday morning, March 21, 2012,
the persistent boom sounds were expanding to the south and west.

We continued then to receive calls about boom sounds until around 5:30 AM on Monday, March 19, and then the phenomenon seemed to die down then. It seemed like the most intense times were from 2 to 3AM that early morning. We spoke to the school district because there are three school buildings in that general vicinity and we were discussing bringing the kids to school. We also monitored the gas levels in all of those school buildings, and there were no elevated levels there. Then we checked more into the water system itself, looking at the pumps, the water pressure, sanitary sewer systems at the wastewater treatment plant to see if any of our status systems and monitoring systems looked different.

 

Clintonville City Administrator Is Jolted Herself

As daylight came, the jolting vibrations were less intense. But I know myself, I was out in the neighborhood at 8:45AM that morning, and there was definitely a fairly intense jolt that occurred at that time.

DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.

Both of the times that I experienced it – one was that morning of Monday, March 19, and one was Sunday evening around 9:50 PM. It is clearly a banging, one instantaneous bang, and whatever ground – in one case I was standing on a cement sidewalk, and in another I was standing in a large utility building. Clearly it simply jolts you, it sounds like someone drops a piece of dynamite outside of the building you’re in. Or that something sort of exploded under the ground, but it’s one large bang, you feel it, and it’s over.

WHAT DID YOU FEEL PHYSICALLY?

Just the fact that the Earth shook. I would describe it as if you were next to some sort of construction site, and then a wrecking ball did one bang into a building, or one jackhammer banging into the ground. That Earthy-type jolt. Not a continuous vibration, just one solid jolt.

BUT YOU HAD THE SENSE THAT IT WAS BELOW YOUR FEET, BELOW THE FLOOR?

Clearly on the cement sidewalk it was underneath and sounded like an exploding noise, a bang came from underneath the Earth’s surface. And when we were in the building you would have thought that something happened immediately outside the building, but you feel it in your feet. Other people describe lamps rattling on their tables and their windows and doors shook.

DID YOU HAVE ANY INTUITIVE SENSE OF WHAT IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN?

I have absolutely no clue. That’s the frustrating thing, in that you know that what you heard and felt is what everybody feels at that exact moment because hear from people who call us at the same time. We had absolutely no phone calls late afternoon yesterday or into the early evening. And as soon as we felt the jolt at 8:10PM yesterday (Monday, March 19), the phone lines lit up at the police department for the following 15 minutes, and then they stopped. So you know that everybody is experiencing the exact same jolt of energy.

THAT WAS 8:10 PM ON MONDAY EVENING, WHICH WOULD BE THE 19TH. I HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT VERY STRONG JOLTS AT 12:15AM AND 5:10AM TODAY, TUESDAY MARCH 20TH, IS THAT CORRECT?

There was the 8:10 PM last night, another near 10:00PM. And then early Tuesday morning at 12:00AM, 1:00AM, and 2:00AM. That’s based on a large volume of phone calls coming in immediately after that time to the police department. So there were sort of five intense instances yesterday in the evening and then into Tuesday morning.

DID THE DESCRIPTIONS CHANGE AT ALL OVER THE TIME LINE?

The only thing that changed was a somewhat wider area of people calling. From the northeast quadrant of the city, it seemed to go slightly further west and south covering more area.

 

Clintonville Investigation of Boom Cause

So we own our own sewer, water, and electric departments. We have monitored all those activities, all the pressure in the water systems, we have tested with our pump vendor all the different pumps that service the four city water wells that we have within our system. Those are all functioning properly and aren’t turning on or off improperly. We have checked the pressure both in the system and in the water tower – that has been found to also be functioning properly.

We have contacted experts at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources who oversee our water system and have confirmed that nothing about the water system malfunctioning would be creating these sort of noises under the ground. In addition we have spoken to people at We Energies  – our local natural gas provider. We Energies  came out both days to monitor gas levels in the area. We have a closed landfill to the southeast of this area and we have checked by monitoring not only the air around the landfill, but we have also taken samples and there is no elevated methane gas coming from that closed landfill.

We have a small dam that’s in the middle of the community southwest of this region. We have spoken to engineers that deal with dams on a regular basis. We have checked the actual location of the dam via GPS signals and confirmed that nothing has moved or shifted with the dam. The dam engineers have also given us reason to believe that the boom sounds would not come from the dam.

We have spoken to geologists both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee about what is happening. We have confirmed via the seismology monitors  – the closest is about 30 minutes from downtown Clintonville – there’s no earthquake or earthquake consistent activity being monitored near us.

We have spoken to engineers that have looked at the bedrock in our area and it doesn’t sound consistent with anything that they know. We’ve spoken to our large industries in the community to see if anything’s changed over the last few days, or last week or so that would be different in their operations that could be sort of any of this jolting type behavior being found somewhere around the Earth. They also have looked at other geological things like earth shifting from glaciers, what they call ice or frost quakes. Nothing definite there. We have spoken to our county and all the counties around us regarding mining, explosive permits, any sort of mining going on in pits or anything like that where there could be manmade activity going on around us that would cause these noises and jolting vibrations to occur.

We confirmed that that’s not a case. We’ve spoken to military authorities and confirmed that although we do have a National Guard Armory, nothing has occurred there or in and around our area with any planes, ammunition, anything like that, that would be creating these boom noises.

HAVE YOU TALKED WITH ANYONE ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THERE MIGHT BE SOME UNIDENTIFIED OR NOT OFTEN USED CAVERNS OR TUNNELS UNDERNEATH THE AREA OF CLINTONVILLE?

One of our local industries has a tunnel between two of their buildings. We toured that tunnel yesterday and were able to monitor the gas levels in there, which again came up with nothing. There was no reason to be concerned about that tunnel. We also have discussed caverns, there’s nothing that we are aware of that would create any sort of—that that would be the thing that is occurring.

WHERE YOU WERE STANDING ONCE ON THE SIDEWALK, ARE YOU AWARE OF ANY SORT OF UNDERGROUND CAVERN, CHAMBER OR BASEMENT UNDERNEATH WHERE YOU WERE STANDING YOURSELF?

No I was just standing on a regular sidewalk adjacent to a public street.

HOW FAR BELOW GROUND DO YOU ESTIMATE THE BOOMS ARE OCCURRING?

Based on the geologists, I have reason to believe that it’s got to be within the first mile under the Earth’s surface. Earthquakes typically occur further down than a mile, and no earthquakes are being registered on any earthquake monitoring devices. So whatever is going on has to be within the first mile underneath the ground.

NO ONE KNOWS OF ANYTHING THAT IS WITHIN A MILE UNDERGROUND OF THE SURFACE OF CLINTONVILLE?

Nothing that would lead anyone to believe that they can explain what’s been going on and why it’s been happening.

AS A CITY ADMINSTRATOR FOR NEARLY 15 YEARS, WHAT GOES THROUGH YOUR MIND AS A POSSIBILITY?

Based on the fact that we’ve spent two days researching as much as we have, it really seems to be that the most logical conclusion is that it is some natural phenomena that’s occurring under the Earth’s surface. Maybe it’s because we have had such strange warm winter weather, and the Earth just isn’t used to this sort of weather and could something be shifting because of that, and will it sort of disseminate and go away over time and that we may never really have a definitive answer what has happened.

WHAT IF IT KEEPS OCCURRING?

If it keeps occurring we will continue to do any additional investigation that we can and assuming that things do not worsen, there may have to be some tolerance level to see if it gets better over time. We are going to have an audio and video will be setup at the Clintonville utility building, which is in the region where the largest amount of activity has been occurring.

IS THERE ANY POSSIBILITY THAT THE U.S. MILITARY COULD HAVE UNDERGROUND FACILITIES THAT THEY DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO DECLASSIFY AND THAT WHEN THEY THAT THEY DON’T KNOW OF ANYTHING, COULD IT POSSIBLY BE UNDERGROUND MILITARY INSTALLATIONS?

I suppose anything is possible, but I would have a hard time believing that they wouldn’t, to some degree, be honest about what could be occurring.”

To contact the Clintonville City Administrator’s office:

Phone:   715-823-7600
Email:    [email protected].

 

March 22, 2012 – Clintonville Hires Engineering
Firm to Investigate Unexplained Booms

After police dispatchers received a few more calls early Thursday morning, March 22, 2012, Clintonville City Administrator Lisa Kuss announced that she was hiring the engineering firm Ruekert Mielke of Waukesha, Wisconsin, to install four ground seismology monitors around the city to find any possible epicenter underground that could be responsible for the persistent booms. Lisa Kuss plans to spend up to $7,000 on the seismology monitoring investigation.

 

Updated 031512:  More Unexplained Loud Booms,
Now in Georgia and Alabama

Subject: Powerful Boom in Southeastern Georgia
Date: March 15, 2012
To: [email protected]

Linda, This morning at around 8:28 am, a large explosion or boom was heard over Brunswick GA. This boom shook window and doors throughout the entire county. Upon further reports, it was felt from as far west as 10 miles west of Waycross GA, south to Folkston GA, and north to Savannah GA. A local radio call in show on WGIG, 1440 AM took calls from people that heard and felt this large event. I just wanted you to be aware of what has happened here and maybe help shed some light on this event. If you need any more information, do not hesitate to contact me. Regards, Brunswick, Georgia Resident

 

March 15, 2012, TV headline by News4Jax.com, Jacksonville, Florida.

The five southeastern Georgia counties where the very loud, window-rattling boom was heard on March 15, 2012, between 8:15 AM and 8:30 AM were Brantley, Camden, Charlton, Glynn and McIntosh Counties, marked with red circles in map below.

Officer Todd Rhodes from Georgia’s Brunswick Police Dept. told Channel 4:  “It was a noise that literally shook our home. There was some panic there because you know when you hear that noise as far-reaching as it was – and not only hearing it, but feeling it – you want to know, ‘What is this?’”

The five southeastern Georgia counties where the very loud, window-rattling boom
was heard on March 15, 2012, between 8:15 AM and 8:30 AM were
Brantley, Camden, Charlton, Glynn and McIntosh Counties

News4Jax.com reported that the U. S. Geological Survey had no seismic evidence of an earthquake and the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay said they “were not conducting any operations that would have caused a sonic boom or explosion.”  Channel 4 checked with the Navy and Marines, which said there were two F/A-18 Super Hornets flying over Georgia at the time, “but they were nowhere close to the speed of sound.” The FAA told Channel 4 the agency had no record of any aircraft going supersonic in the 5-county area on Thursday morning.
The loud boom mystery has persisted in many states for a long time. See related Earthfiles Archive reports below.

The fact that the loud booms continue over time without any explanation is increasingly troubling to affected residents such as Brunswick police officer Todd Rhodes, who told Channel 4, “We haven’t heard anything and that’s sad. So many people here have felt the booms and we don’t have a clue what it was.”

Brunswick, Georgia, is on the Atlantic coast and 453 miles northwest,
a little south of Birmingham, Alabama, are Chilton and Bibb Counties where unexplained
loud, wall-rumbling sounds were reported over a 2-county area on March 6, 2012.

 

Loud “Explosions” in Chilton and Bibb Counties, in Central Alabama

Birmingham News online, March 6, 2012.

453 miles northwest of Brunswick, Georgia, near Birmingham, Alabama, on March 6, 2012, the 911 dispatchers in Chilton County, Alabama, south of Birmingham, received some 100 reports from all over the county “of loud explosions and walls of homes suddenly shaking.” The 911 director, Dan Wright, told the Birmingham News that he was in his home at about 4:30 PM when, “I felt the ground shaking and I heard this loud rumbling. My garage door started shaking and it sounded like it was falling down.” In Bibb County to the west of Chilton County, the 911 dispatcher also received about half a dozen calls reporting similar booms and shakes.

Birmingham News online, March 7, 2012.

The next day on March 7, 2012, the Birmingham News reported that the Federal Aviation Administration “found no records of any flights Tuesday afternoon, March 6, that could have caused a sonic boom in central Alabama.” An FAA spokesperson explained civilian planes don’t fly fast enough to cause a sonic boom – only military aircraft could do that. But a spokesman for Maxwell-Gunter AFB in Montgomery denied any of its aircraft were flying faster than the speed of sound.

 

See Earthfiles Archive of previous boom reports:

• 03/20/2012 — Two Nights of Mysterious Rattling Booms in Clintonville, WI
• 11/13/2011 — Updated: More Loud Booms in Virginia and Missouri; More Quakes in Oklahoma
• 10/27/2011 — More Mysterious Hum Reports from North America to China
• 10/04/2011 — Updated: What Are Strange “Hums” That Keep People Awake?
• 10/03/2011 — Part 1: Viewer Letters About Strange, Loud Booms
• 06/07/2011 — What Are the Mysterious Booms?
• 05/13/2011 — More Viewer Letters About Mysterious Booms
• 05/11/2011 — Updated Reprints: Earthfiles Viewers Reports of Strange, Loud Booms
• 02/08/2011 — More Reports of Strange Booms and Aerial Lights
• 01/29/2011 — Earthfiles Viewers Reports of Strange, Loud Booms

Also see Earthfiles reports: 

February 28, 2012

If Earthfiles viewers and radio listeners have more information about loud, unexplained, wall-rattling boom sounds, please email: [email protected].  All requests for confidentiality are honored.


More Information:

For further reports about strange hums and booms that have also been reported in 2011 to 2012, please see reports below from Earthfiles Archive.

• 03/01/2012 — Updated 030112: Solar CMEs Hitting Earth’s Magnetic Fields – Do They Make Strange, Loud Sounds?
• 02/28/2012 — Strange Sounds in Washington State
• 02/09/2012 — Updated Feb. 9: Eerie, Strange Sounds Heard in Tennessee and Kansas
• 02/04/2012 — Video of Kiev-like Strange Sound in Amarillo, Texas: What Happened?
• 02/02/2012 — Updated: Earthfiles Email About Mysterious “Chorus of Trumpets” and Other Strange Sounds
• 12/31/2011 — Updated – Part 1: Earthfiles Mail About High Strangeness
• 11/13/2011 — Updated: More Loud Booms in Virginia and Missouri; More Quakes in Oklahoma
• 10/27/2011 — More Mysterious Hum Reports from North America to China
• 10/04/2011 — Updated: What Are Strange “Hums” That Keep People Awake?
• 10/03/2011 — Part 1: Viewer Letters About Strange, Loud Booms


Websites:

“Clintonville officials want answers after two nights of mysterious booms”: 
http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/143450196.html

“Another night of mysterious booms in Clintonville” by Nick Penzenstadler, Post-Crescent Staff Writer:
http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20120320/APC0101/120320005/night-booms-Clintonville

“Clintonville officials stymied by loud booms” by Nick Penzenstadler, Post-Crescent Staff Writer:
http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20120320/APC0101/203200419/Clintonville-officials-stymied-by-loud-booms?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CAPC-News

Unexplained Booms, Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexplained_boom#cite_note-0

Loud Booms in Virginia and Missouri; More Quakes in Oklahoma:
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1910category=Environment

Strange Booms in North Carolina: 
http://www.ufo-blogger.com/2012/02/strange-booms-sound-reported-in-north.html

Strange Booms in Texas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plsmV4DyAlg

Strange Booms in Florida:  http://www.weirdus.com/states/florida/unexplained_phenomena/booming_sounds/index.php

December 1977 Newspaper Reports:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=JBRIAAAAIBAJsjid=
mAANAAAAIBAJpg=2018,5070585hl=en

USGS Booms and Seneca Guns:   http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/booms.php

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